Violet Hill
by elvisdepressedly
Summary: Since the 1960's, Briarcliff Hospital has transformed from an insane asylum to a state of the art treatment center: just the kind place Kit Walker needs to be in after his suicide attempt. While there, he becomes infatuated with longtime patient Violet Harmon, who doesn't feel the same way about him–yet. Violet/Kit AU. Rated M for language, violence, triggers, and sexuality.
1. Attempt (Introduction)

_That's all I've learned: to suffer._

Pink, orange, green, white. Like madras pants worn by a pretty girl on Martha's Vineyard. Much like the girls on the Vineyard, some of the pills were long and skinny. Unlike the girls there, some of them were round and fat. Cupping them all in my hand was like trying to contain a handful of sand, trying to hold an overflow. The little green ones were the hardest to keep from falling to the countertop, keep from rolling off and jumping against the hard surface with a series of _ping, ping, ping_ sounds. There was no way I would have been able to swallow all of them at once. I lowered my hand right above the surface of the counter and slowly let them fall onto the linoleum, only a few bouncing and scattering away from the central pile that spilled down. Pink, orange, green, white. Everyone said death was black. Never did they say it would be pink, orange, green, white.

I couldn't figure out what way was the best way to do this. It wasn't something you were taught, or could be taught, or should be taught. It was something you had to figure out for yourself–like how to properly move inside of a girl, or how to get really good at writing, or how to position yourself in bed so you fall asleep the fastest. Only an individual can learn how to best do these things for himself. Suicide wouldn't be any different than the other things I'd done: I'd have to figure it out on my own.

Split them up evenly. Three piles. One, two, three, four in one pile, and another pile, and another pile, until they were separated into three small groups rather than one too-big heap. I curled my fingers and swept the first pile, the one on the far left, into the palm of my open hand. Pink, orange, green, white. They stuck to my tongue like ice, their chalky, uncoated surface leaving my mouth bitter. Take a gulp of water. Swallow. Thirty-three percent complete. Repeat the procedure once more, twice more. Sweep pills into hand, bring pills into mouth, bring glass to lips, swallow. Repeat. The water was cold, and I could feel it trickle down my insides. It felt nice. For the first time in a long time, something felt nice.

The pills went down much more smoothly than they had in my fantasies. I expected to feel something, some sort of triumphant swell in my chest as I lay down on my bed and waited to fall asleep, go down, down, down, until I was so far in I couldn't be pulled back out. I expected to anticipate the end with a sense of relief, or maybe accomplishment, or pride in having finally mustered up the courage to do it. But my mind got stuck on how easy it was, how normal I felt. How dying is not much different than living. One lasted longer, but they felt just about the same.

I was vaguely aware of my cat licking my face, rubbing his face against mine, meowing urgently. I wanted to pet him while I still could, but my arms were too heavy to lift. Everything was too heavy. He climbed onto me, curling right below my chin like he'd done when he was a kitten, and it was mildly comforting to feel his purring against my chest. It was duller than I remember, more distant. Everything was heavy, and everything was dull.

All I remember seeing before falling asleep was the slow blurring of the ceiling fan, its hum combined with the sound of my cat's purring and my own voice repeating to him over and over that it would be okay. It'll be okay, buddy. It's okay.


	2. Briarcliff It Is

**Thank you all for the likes and kind reviews! It's encouraging to see such positivity in response to my writing. Since the intro was so short, I tried to compensate by making this chapter particularly long. Let me know what you think!  
And kudos to EmpireX for correctly predicting the motive behind Kit's suicide attempt–psychic, are we?  
Keep on reviewing. I love to hear what you guys have to say about it. xx**

* * *

And_ if I turn it on me, if I even it out, can I still get in or will they send me to hell?  
__Can I still get into heaven if I kill myself?_

Suicide has its statistics. Numbers. Digits. Figures. Here's some examples:

_405,999:_ number of suicide attempts made per year in the US.

_36,909:_ number of suicides completed per year in the US.

_3,706:_ number of suicides completed annually due to alcohol and/or drug overdose.

_Nine_: number of days I spent in a coma after consuming

_600 _milligrams of Oxycodone and

_700 _milligrams of Quetiapine (brand name: Seroquel) and

_400 _milligrams of Ziprasidone (brand name: Geodon) and

_550 _milligrams of Lorazepam (brand name: Ativan).

_Six: _times per day, on average, that I am asked how I'm feeling.

_Four_: number of times times I have refused visitation from my ex-wife, Alma.

_Three:_ number oftimes my ex-wife, Alma, called back 911 to make sure an ambulance was coming.

_Five_: number of minutes she said she waited before coming in through the unlocked back door of (what used to be) our home.

_Eight: _number of items she'd intended to collect from (what used to be) our dining room.

_Thirteen_: amount of steps she had to climb from the downstairs to the upstairs.

_2.25_: number of seconds it took her to see me lying unconscious in (what used to be) our bed.

_Twelve_: Number of times she said my name while trying to wake me up.

_Twenty-three_: Number of times she said my name for no particular reason after she realized she couldn't wake me up.

_Seventy-eight: _Number of weeks we remained married.

_Seventy_: Number of weeks she remained faithful.

_Thirty-nine_: Age of her new boyfriend.

_6,000: _dollar value of her wedding and engagement rings, combined.

_15,000: _dollar value of my divorce lawyer fees.

_Six: _number of years I've been in love with Alma.

_Zero: _number of years she's loved me the same way.

_Zero: _percent chance that we can resurrect our marriage.

_Zero: _percent chance that I will find someone like her.

_Zero: _percent chance that I will be able to pick myself up from this.

_Zero: _number of times I want to keep trying to do so.

_One: _number of suicide attempts I have made.

* * *

I could see the light getting closer. All my life I'd scoffed when told about seeing a light when you die, but there it was. Like lying on the beach in the summer, warm and bright and right in my eyes, radiating over every inch of my body. I opened my eyes to see a wide, white orb right above my head, lighter than the sun and not as hot.

This was heaven.

I was lying on something soft, warm, dry. I strained my neck to try and see what was around me, but my muscles didn't comply. They could barely move an inch before cramping in protest. There were cobwebs in my throat that kept me from making any noise that sounded clearer than a croak, and my eyes refused to focus on the orb in front of me.

A shadow materialized in my line of sight. It was the silhouette of a tall, lean man, wearing a robe of some kind.

"No shit," I wheezed. "No shit. You're real."

"Of course I'm real."

The voice of god sounded particularly human. I had expected him to wave his hand over my face, cast some kind of spell or bless me in some kind of way, but he just stood there without moving.

"Why wouldn't I be real?"

I squinted, trying to piece together the images around me, trying to get a closer look at his face. But all I saw was a shadow. I shrugged slowly.

"Because it didn't seem possible for somebody like you to exist."

"Somebody like me?"

"Yeah, somebody with so much power."

"Well, there are plenty of doctors in Massachusetts, Kit. And our power is fairly limited these days."

I tried to blink away the shadows to see who was hunched in front of me, but the light was nearly blinding, keeping me from completely opening my eyes. With great effort, I raised my right arm and shielded my face with it, blocking my eyes from the glare without totally obscuring my view of the room around me.

"Oh, sorry. That must be bright."

My eyes adjusted to the more mild lighting as the figure, now hunched over, somehow made the glare reduce into a dim glow. I focused in on the figure even more, realizing that what I had thought was a robe was only been a polyester coat. As the figure stood up to look at me, I saw that the man I had thought to be god was only a doctor.

Just like that, I shifted back into being a non-believer. For if there had really been a god watching over me, if there truly was a savior, he wouldn't have sent anyone to save me.

This man was too young and too handsome to be a doctor. Tall, brown hair, rough shadowy stubble on his impossibly good looking face. Half smile with crinkled eyes that tried to relax me, tried to reassure me that he and I were friends, but only agitated me even more.

"Do you remember my name?" He asked me.

"Doogie Howser?"

He laughed. A light, airy laugh, like he hadn't ever considered such a witty joke. Like he thought it was funny, but not enough so to throw back his head and really, fully laugh. Like he was too tired to laugh like that.

"Funny. You're funny, Kit."

I didn't acknowledge the compliment.

"I'm Ben, and I've been taking care of you. Do you know where you are?"

I looked around me. I was on a bed with beige plastic barriers on either that would have been at elbow-height, had I been sitting up. White gauze blankets. That was the softness I'd mistaken for sand earlier, when I thought I'd landed on a beach somewhere.

"Aren't you a doctor? Shouldn't I be addressing you as doctor something?"

"Would you be more comfortable if you could call me doctor?"

"Not really."

Something that resembled a clothespin was attached to my forefinger. A green bruise was sprouting out from the area where the needle had gone into the crook of my arm, snaking thin tubes into my bloodstream.

Green. Green and yellow. Signs of an old bruise.

"Do you know where you are, Kit?"

I looked back up at the doctor, strangely insulted by how calm his tone was. Though it was obviously meant to be soothing, his delivery sat slightly to the left of being right. Like petting a cat from back to front. His intentions were pure, but he was irritating the animal.

"Kit?"

The fluorescent light cast shadows on the doctor's face, enhancing the dark wrinkles that lined it. I wondered if the lights in his home made him appear as exhausted as he appeared to me in that moment, if his children ever noticed the grooves in his skin and ran their fingers over them, if his wife ever looked at them and remembered when they weren't there. I wondered if his colleagues all had the lines, like they were rings on a tree that indicated how long you'd been around. How many patients must he have lost to have so many lines in his face? How much sleep must he have lost over people, like me, that he couldn't really save no matter how he tried? I wondered if once I got out of here, a new crease would fold in his skin in my memory and his children would trace it and his wife would resent it.

"Do you know where you are?"

My eyes trailed back down to my hands. Big and lean, veins clearly visible behind too-pale skin. I clenched them and relaxed them again, opening and closing, clenching and relaxing. A piece of tape covered another tube leading to the biggest vein below the surface of my left hand. Maybe, if I pulled out the cords and ran, I could still find a way to die before they caught up with me. Maybe if I somehow breached hospital security, I could be free to free myself from hell. Maybe. But I wasn't going to try.

"I am not in heaven."

I didn't have to look at the doctor's face to know that I'd made him sad. I could hear it in his voice.

"No. You're not."

* * *

_Eight_: number of days I was required to stay in the Massachusetts General Hospital psychiatric inpatient unit to "stabilize my mood".

_Four: _average number of times per day I asked to be released from the MGH psych unit.

_One_: number of times that wish was actually granted.

_Two: _number of hospitals in Massachusetts that were fit to treat me "in my present condition".

"There's one quite close to here, actually. And it's the sister hospital of Mass General. Affiliated with Harvard. Very well-known, very high-end service. Most people say it's the best mental hospital in the country."

The too-handsome doctor is sitting across from me in his office, legs crossed, fingers teepeed together in front of his face. He'd handed me two information packets describing two different hospitals that I could choose from. For fifteen minutes, the doctor described the pros of each of the hospitals like he's a realtor trying to get me to choose between two comparably wonderful houses. I was not particularly interested in either.

The brochures were printed on glossy paper and boasted equally stunning pictures of old buildings surrounded by sprawling green. Sometimes companies would pay to keep their brochures inside the convenience store of the gas station, and a few of those companies were travel agencies. The photos on those information packets, the ones in my gas station, were almost identical to the ones on the papers I was holding. The only difference between a brochure advertising Irish castle tours and one advertising Massachusetts mental hospitals were the amount of people in the photos; in tourist ads, there were always loads of smiling people in the scene. In hospital ads, there were no people at all.

I held up the brochure of the hospital that the doctor had spoken more highly of, the one with the Harvard Medical crest on the front cover.

"Where is this one?"

"It's in Belmont," he said. "It's just on the other side of town. You know Harvard Square, don't you?"

I nodded.

"It's only a few miles from Harvard Square. Beautiful, beautiful campus. Many of the patients there liken it to a college campus. As a matter of fact, I treat many patients at that–"

"And this one?" I asked, holding up the other brochure. "Where is this one?"

The doctor's mouth hung open a bit, still processing the abrupt ending of his last sentence. He blinked a few times, then cleared his throat.

"Oh, Briarcliff. That's much farther away."

There was turning of cogs in my mind, followed by a swell in my chest. Far away. Far away from my home, from this mess, from Alma. Far, far away.

"How much farther away?"

"It's way out west. Belmont is only about 25 minutes from Mass General, whereas Briarcliff's in a town over two hours from here. It's practically halfway to New York."

"Great," I said, handing back the brochure for the hospital nearby. "I'll go to Briarcliff."

_Six:_ number of seconds the doctor spent looking at me skeptically after handing him back the brochure.

"Do you simply want to go to Briarcliff because it's farther away?"

"Yeah."

_Eleven: _number of times he blinked before speaking again.

"Why is that?"

I wouldn't raise my head to look at him. I flipped through the pages of the Briarcliff brochure, scanning the pages that described each different unit. I brought the booklet closer to my face, smelling the new laminated pages.

"Because I want to be far away from my ex-wife," I said. "Ideally, I'd like to leave the state. But you won't let me."

"The best care possible is right here in Massachusetts, Kit."

"Yeah, I know. You keep saying that."

The doctor shifted in his seat. "Aren't you concerned with the level of care you'll be getting at Briarcliff? Don't you worry that they won't treat you in the way you need to be treated?"

I look up at him. I wonder how many classes must be offered in medical school that teach you how to keep a straight face.

"No, doctor. I'm not. Are you?"

"I think the hospital closer by might have the care you're looking for, Kit."

I shut the second brochure and tossed it on his desk, leaning back in my chair and shaking my head.

"I'm not looking for care, doctor. I don't think there's anything wrong with me."

He smiled at me, the way you smile at a child telling an elaborate story.

"You don't?" He asked.

"No," I said. "I don't think I'm depressed."

"You attempted suicide not three weeks ago, Kit."

"I think I'm sad because my wife cheated on me and left me for another man. I think I tried to kill myself because I couldn't envision my life without her. I think it's going to be impossible to get over her." I clenched my jaw. "I think _you_ think I'm depressed. And that's enough for you to order me to stay in treatment. And I think that if I try to leave, if I try to file a petition for discharge, you'll take me to court. And who is the court going to believe? You, the Harvard-educated, Harvard-employed, Harvard-obsessed doctor who might as well be on Grey's Anatomy, or me, the college dropout gas station attendant who just tried to off himself by taking enough pills to tranquilize a horse?"

He didn't move. He didn't react. He just sat there, fingers pressed together, smiling at me. I lowered my tone, which had grown louder without my noticing, and cleared my throat.

"I know where I stand, doctor. I know that I gotta do what you say. But at least let me do it where I want."

He smirked at me, trying to seem sympathetic. But it only looked like he was mocking me.

"I think the other hospital would suit you better, Kit."

"I know you think that. But if you're actually interested in me getting better, you'll send me far away from here. Far away from the life I used to have, far away from things that will make me remember why I'm so sad all the time. You'll send me someplace that Alma can't get to by taking a bus."

Saying her name made me remember what it sounded like when she laughed when her head was on my shoulder. I smelled her shampoo and heard her sighing in my ear and tickling the back of my neck and telling me that she loved me and my stomach turned over and then dropped, and out of nowhere, the images in my mind turned from my beautiful, perfect Alma to all the ways I could kill myself with the items in the room. And then I figured something may actually be wrong with me.

"Send me someplace she won't visit. Someplace I can really try hard to forget her. If you really want me to get something from this, doctor, you'll put me where she can't get at me."

And I can't get at her.

I am not an educated man, but I know when people are pretending like they're sad for me and when they really are. And when I saw the muscles relax in the doctor's face, when I saw him try hard not to look like he felt bad for me, I knew I'd said something to convince him. I knew he was on my side.

He reached over and picked up a fountain pen and uncapped it. Sighing, he scribbled something in my file, then recapped the pen and placed it on his desk.

"Alright, Kit," he said, closing my file. "Briarcliff it is."


	3. Violet

_And every summer is a hot token to the cold, cold take of lust,  
and every autumn singes with the business of sadness. _

"Trees look nice out here."

The van driver looked at me in his rearview. For the first hour and a half of my trip to Briarcliff, he been made dry comments and then immediately looked back at me in his rearview. He would say something mundane about the weather, about the Red Sox, about traffic, about cigarettes, about my haircut, about the kind of people who ride in this van. Then he'd look back at me in the rearview and wait for my reaction. I made a point of maintaining the same blank expression throughout the whole ride.

"Yeah."

That was what I said to every one of his comments. He was right this time, like he hadn't been for many of the other comments he'd made ("I think they'll turn it around this season." "Scott Brown isn't as bad as everybody says he is." "Gas prices will get better, just you wait.")

Had I gone this far west into Massachusetts earlier on in my life, maybe to visit a family member or go apple picking or visit a historic building, driving along the road I was on would have felt differently. It would have stirred something in the base of my chest that only wakes for things that happen at a certain time–the same kind of feeling I get when I decorate a Christmas tree or put on a costume at Halloween or go to the beach. Things that are special. Things that you take pictures of. It was a straight, unwinding road that went on and on until it melted into the line of the sky, markedly different than zigzagging narrow streets of Boston. It had no turns. No houses. Just miles of black concrete lined by red and orange and yellow and brown. I hadn't expected the ride to hell to be so lovely.

"We're almost there, kid."

"Kit," I said, lingering on the last letter. I could see his eyes move back to his rearview out of the corners of my own, but I didn't meet his gaze.

"My name is Kit. Rhymes with Mitt."

"Oh…oh. I…was just calling you kid. Like a kind of casual term of endearment sorta thing." He laughed nervously. The same kind of laugh that Alma would give me towards the end when I asked why she'd been working so late every night. It was normal in cadence, a little too loud, and it lasted longer than it needed to.

Alma. Alma. Alma Walker. But her name wasn't Alma Walker anymore, was it? She'd changed it back to the name she had when I first met her. In a year or so, she'd take the name of the George-Clooney looking lawyer she left me for after only knowing him for eight weeks. She fell in love with a man over the course of eight weeks after being with me for six years.

_Nine_: number of times I had to ask Alma what his name was before she told it to me.

_Three_: number of hours she took packing her things on the day she left.  
I had sat on the living room couch while she did it, staring down at the hardwood floor. Her footsteps got louder behind me and then trailed away as she walked back and forth, back and forth, hastily putting all of her things into the nice suitcases I didn't buy her on her birthday. Maybe if I'd bought them for her, maybe if she hadn't needed to buy them herself, she would have stayed.

"You alright, kid? Kit?" The van driver stumbled over his words, trying not to upset me. For the first time during the ride, I looked in his rearview and met his eyes. It made sense why he'd look at me with so much worry. I would have had the same look if I were in his position, shuttling someone who looked like me to a mental hospital.

"Yeah, I'm alright," I said, though was evident to both of us that I was not.

He pressed his lips together and looked back at the road, sighing. Maybe I'd made him sad. Maybe everybody who came into the van made him sad.

"We're almost there," he said softly. And then the van driver did me a kindness: he leaned over and turned on the radio just loud enough for us not to have a conversation over, but still quiet enough to allow me to sleep.

* * *

"Hey. Wake up."

I smelled the trees and felt the breeze blow through the open van door and didn't have to open my eyes to know that we'd stopped at Briarcliff. The phrase "final resting place" lodged itself into my brain and I could not will myself to wake up and face the man who opened the door for me or face the imprisonment that I chose for myself. Maybe if I sat there with my eyes closed and didn't move, then the van and the hospital and the straight road and the bleeding trees would dissolve away and I would be back in my bed, waiting to die with my cat on my lap. Maybe this was an elaborate dream that I was clinging to while I still had the strength to cling to something.

I then heard the slap on my face more than I felt it.

"Wake up, jackass."

My eyes shot open too soon. The sunlight flooded them, stung them, made them water, and I blinked furiously to let them adjust. I could only see the blurred, shattered image of the girl that was standing in front of me, the one whose clear, high voice had spoken almost directly into my ear. The one who had just slapped me straight across the face.

"Don't hit the poor kid!"

"He'll be fine. You awake yet?"

I brought my hand to my jaw and massaged it, eyes slowly focusing on my assailant. I could smell her better than I could see her–she smelled like shampoo and cigarettes and the outside, like she had gone running in a pine forest. When my eyes finally rested on her, she did not look the way I had expected her to. I had not envisioned a petite, thin, angel-faced girl with wide brown eyes and pale white skin. But there she was, too young and too pretty to be talking like that or to be brash enough to slap a stranger. She leaned right down in front of me, one hand propped on the door frame and the other resting on her thigh, and stared at me with furrowed brows.

"Who are you?" I asked less politely than I'd intended to.

"I'm the person waiting for you to wake the hell up so we can go inside."

"That's a long name."

She barely cocked an eyebrow and continued to watch me, face unmoving. I wasn't sure who she was, or why she wanted so badly for me to get out of the van. I looked past the girl's shoulder at the van driver, whose eyes were quickly darting between me and her. Though I didn't even know his name, the driver and his van were the last things connecting me to a place where I felt safe. He had picked me up from the same hospital where I was born, and now he was going to leave me someplace I may never be allowed to leave.

"Is this where I'm supposed to get out?" I asked him. He looked at me, then at the ground. Then he nodded.

"Just follow me, for Christ's sake. I swear I know where we're going."

I looked back at the girl while she spoke, watched her lips move along with the words she was saying, and realized that I didn't want to follow her because I didn't trust her. She was too pretty and her voice was too sweet and she didn't belong in this image, with the rotting trees lined behind her and the shy van driver refusing to look me in the eye and the sun coming in and out behind clouds, flashing lights on and off over the hospital grounds.

"Are you hospital staff?" I asked, which made her smirk and roll her eyes.

"I might as well be." She held out the hand that had been resting on her thigh, leaving it suspended in the air between us. When I didn't take her hand, she sighed and let her head droop a little.

"Seriously? You're really not going to come inside with me, dude?" Whenever she shifted her weight or moved her head, I could smell her all over me. She smelled much nicer than she spoke.

"I don't know you."

"Yeah, I don't know you, either. I guess we're both taking a risk." She waved the hand hanging between us toward her body, gesturing for me to step out. "Come on, James Dean. Let's get this show on the road."

I looked back at the van driver, whose eyes remained on the concrete.

"Hey," I said, and he looked up at me. "Is it safe for me to follow her?"

His hands were shoved into the pockets of his sweatshirt and his eyes were still moving between the two of us. I heard the girl make a noise of disapproval and saw her roll her eyes, but I didn't acknowledge it. I kept looking at the van driver, waiting for him to tell me what to do. I had no reason to trust his word any more than hers, but something about the disconnect between her perfect appearance and harsh tone kept me from believing anything she said.

Eventually, he nodded his head.

"She knows where she's going."

She knows where she's going. Not what she's doing. Not _you can trust her_. Not _she's an employee_. Just _she knows where she's going_.

I step out of the car and sling my bag over my shoulder. Standing right beside her, I noticed just how much smaller she was than me.

"Is that all you brought?"

"Yeah," I said, adjusting the strap on my shoulder.

"Just one duffel bag?"

"Yeah." I looked over at her. She returned the look, smiling at like someone who already knew the punch line.

"Not planning on staying very long?"

I shrugged, stuffing my hands in my pockets. She just nodded at me slowly and turned to walk away, not waiting for my reply. I guess I must have taken too long.

I took my time watching her walk away. There was something alluring about the way she walked. Maybe it was the way her loose skirt shifted with each movement of her hips. Maybe it was the way her t-shirt, two sizes too small, strained against her back and put on display every movement of her muscles. Maybe it was the way she was twisting her hair into a long braid and draping it over her shoulder. Maybe it was the fact that I was lonely and this girl, whoever she was, was the first one I'd been attracted to since being single. But I was drawn to her. I didn't trust her, and I didn't want to follow her. But I knew I would.

She got fifteen feet away before she noticed I wasn't behind her. She turned, tying an elastic band to the end of her braid, and raised her eyebrows at me.

"You coming?"

I looked over at the van driver, the last remaining part of my first life, and sighed.

"I guess I oughta follow her."

"That's Violet," he said. His accent was thick, just like mine. "She's harmless. She's prickly, but she's harmless."

I nodded. We both looked down at the ground, not sure how to properly say goodbye to each other. I hadn't shook his hand when we met, so I couldn't very well shake his hand now. I didn't know him near well enough to hug him. I couldn't even thank him by name.

"Thanks for the ride."

"Yeah, not a problem."

I looked up at him and gave him the most genuine smile I could muster. All that came onto my face was a forced, thin line, but the driver smiled back ten times as wide. I guess he figured that was the best smile a person like me could come up with.

As I was walking away, I heard him call after me to wish me luck. I turned to thank him again, but he was already shutting the driver's seat door.

"Hey!"

She didn't stop to let me catch up. She just continued her leisurely pace up the hill, dragging her unlaced canvas sneakers along the grass and playing with the end of her braid.

"Violet, wait!"

She turned and frowned at me, narrowing her eyes. She didn't stop, though.

"Pick up your pace," she called back over her shoulder after turning to face forwards. I broke into a light jog, my bag hitting my side _thump_ _thump_ _thump_ with each step. I finally reached her, panting and sweating, when we were nearly at the top of the hill.

"Why the hell didn't you wait for me?" I asked breathlessly, wiping sweat from my forehead.

"Why were you so slow?"

"I—"

"And how do you know my name?"

I could smell her again, now that I was so close. I wanted to lean in closely and breathe deep, but I couldn't. It would be rude, and strange, and I was out of breath.

"The van driver told me."

She sighed.

"Of course he did."

"Do you two know each other very well?" I asked, seeing the top of a building begin to peek out above the top of the hill.

She paused. Not for too long. Not because she was uncomfortable, or had to come up with an answer. She just wanted to word it precisely.

"He drives me around a lot."

Not _I've been here a while_. Not _I'm in this hospital a lot_. Not _yes, we often chat when he brings me to and from the grounds_. No actual mention of the hospital itself. Just "he drives me around a lot," as though it were casual. As though it meant nothing.

"Where was he driving you from this time?

"Inpatient. Over in the other side of the campus."

"Inpatient?"

My throat choked up. My chest tightened. I saw a flash of light above my head and heard the handsome doctor's voice tell me no, I wasn't in heaven, I was in the hospital. I hadn't died. I had failed at my attempt to resign for my failures. I hadn't died. I was alive, and they were going to make me stay that way, no matter how many times I begged to let them go.

"Yeah. I'm assuming you've been inpatient, too," she says.

I couldn't feel my fingers.

"What makes you say that?"

Maybe the horrified look on my face.

"Everyone at Pritchett has done time in an asylum."

I wanted to be scandalized by her use of such an archaic term, but it was too accurate for me to criticize. An asylum, by definition, is a place where people go to seek refuge. It's a safe place for people who aren't safe. Inpatient units are the same as any other kind of asylum: they are places that keep people from harm. They offer no real therapeutic care. They are not specialized. They do not help you grow. They simply keep you from hurting yourself.

"Pritchett. Is that a unit?"

"No. It's that building," Violet said, raising her arm and pointing at the mansion that had come clear into view.

I must admit, I'd thought about what it would be like to go to a place like this even before things started to decay. And when I'd pictured what a hospital of this kind would look like, I imagined bricks and iron and industry, smokestacks, a grand staircase with heavy wooden doors. I did not imagine the building I had stopped to look at the top of the hill.

"This is it?" I asked.

"This is it."

The hill we were standing on sloped steeply downward and plateaued into a deep valley. That valley housed an expansive brick estate which had everything that American royalty would expect in their home: tall, wide windows. Marble balconies on the third story with white French doors with white curtains. A green sunroof that protruded from the top of the mansion, straight in the middle like a crown. And there, right at the front, what I'd always envisioned: a grand staircase with heavy wooden doors.

"Did it once house the president of the hospital?" I asked.

"Probably. Or the president of the country."

"I'm not sure this is where I'm meant to go," I said.

"Where did they tell you to go?"

"Pritchett 3."

"Then this is where you're meant to go," she said, crossing her arms. Her shirt tightened against her back, her spine straining against the purple fabric. I wanted to know what it would feel like to run my fingers down it. Just once.

"There's no other Pritchett building?" I asked, and she shook her head.

Because certainly, this wasn't where I needed to be. This wasn't a place for the sad and the angry–it was a place for the rich and the satisfied. It was the sort of building I expected to go to after everything was over, after my mind had been put at ease (somehow) and I decided to move on in the most grandiose way possible. It was a place I would live in to follow dreams, not to fight off nightmares. It was not what I expected to see when I looked at hell.

"It's beautiful," I said.

"Looks can be deceiving."

I looked over Violet, who was staring with crossed arms at the estate. Her profile was distinct against the dark forest behind her, pale moon on black sea. I wondered if her skin felt as soft as it looked.

"Sometimes," she continued, "the most beautiful things hold the most darkness on the inside."

She shrugged and twisted her heels to face me, shaking off her solemnity. Her skirt swayed with the movement and she raised her eyebrows at me, breathing in deeply.

"So," she sighed. "Wanna go in?"

"No. But I don't really have a choice."

She smiled and looked down, starting down the hill with her arms still crossed.


	4. Sleeping

_Sing me to sleep, sing me to sleep,  
I'm tired and I want to go to bed.  
Sing me to sleep, sing me to sleep,  
And then leave me alone._

Her hands grabbed at my hair. That was one of my favorite feelings in the world: when she ran her hands all the way through my hair and then stopped at the nape of my neck to tug onto the short ones that grew there. A swell of chills sprouted from behind my shoulders, a crescendo of tingles accented by her breath in my ear and her lips hovering over my skin.

"You smell like lemons."

"I got new shampoo."

I pressed a trail of kisses along her bare collar, her skin warmer than my lips, until my mouth was at the crook of her neck. She leaned her head back and sighed my name and I wished there was some way I could stop everything that was happening and watch her just like that until I got tired of it, until I got so full of sweetness that it made me sick.

"I love you."

She laughed, and said my name, and told me she loved me, too. Then I made her say my name over and over, louder and louder, until there was nothing except the sound of her voice and her sighs and my heart beating loud in my ears as I tried to catch my breath.

"Kit….Kit…_Kit_…"

She shook my arm, trying to wake me up. Both her hands gripped me tightly, shaking, shaking, shaking me as hard as she could. I could hear her breath in my ear, ragged and choking. She was crying. She was crying hard. I could feel tears falling on my forehead.

"Kit…Kit…_Kit_…"

She knelt on the bed beside me, her knees pressing into my side. She grabbed my shoulders, shaking even harder, calling my name over and over, louder and louder, until there was nothing except the sound of her screaming and crying and my heart slowing down in my ears as I tried to catch my death.

"Kit. Kit. Kit?"

The hand I now saw resting on my shoulder was too pale. I quickly looked up and saw a stranger peering down at me with a euthymic expression, and it was her hand that was resting on my skin. Not Alma's.

"Who the hell are you?" I asked, jerking away from her. I wiped the sleep from my face and squeezed my eyes shut, the images of my dream fading fast from my memory. The woman smiled at me, small and patient.

"I'm Mary Eunice, but everyone just calls me Mary. And I'm a nurse here."

I didn't say anything to her. It was hard to get a good look at her face; the only light in my room was that which streamed in through the open door that led to the hallway.

"You have night meds to come take," she continued. "Would you mind following me?"

She was average height and weighed in at no more than a hundred pounds when soaking wet. Her mannerisms were subdued and slow, and her tone was so soft that I had to strain to hear her. She meant no harm to me. And even if she did, she wasn't physically capable of inflicting it.

So I followed her. I followed her out of my bed and into the bright hallway, shuffling my feet along the hardwood floors. I followed her down the corridor past the open bedroom doors of the other patients. I followed her past every set of eyes that watched me as I went, refusing to look up or acknowledge a single one of them. I could feel them all staring at me, sights honing in on me the second I came into their view and staying on me all the way down the hall. But I wouldn't look up.

Surely one of those sets of eyes belonged to Violet, big and brown and filled with the gleam of something—wonder, or mischief, or horror—and I considered looking up, risking locking on eyes that weren't hers and facing the faces of scrutiny, just to share a brief moment with the girl whose hips moved like smoke. But I was too afraid.

* * *

Mary 's thin white fingers held onto a small plastic medicine cup as she rummaged around in the cabinets in the med room.

"I promise you, it won't take this long every time," she called to me from the other side of the little square window that separated the two of us, her on the side of the med room and me on the side of the abandoned corridor.

"We have…you know…a week's worth of daily doses set up in those…um…plastic medicine divider things…" She was trying to divide her attention between giving me a long-winded apology, reading my med sheet, and rummaging for the right bottles in the expansive cabinets that lined the wall closest to where she stood. "So once you're all…settled in…someone will set one of those up for you and this process will be…much…faster."

"It's alright. I don't mind waiting."

"I know you don't, and that's gracious of you. But still…" She'd found the right bottles and lined them up on the countertop below the cabinets, twisting off the caps, _one, two, three, four_. I wondered how many times she'd done this, how long it took her become so smooth and rehearsed in her movements, for the muscle memory of her arms to perfect the motions necessary to do what she was doing. I watched her face, which was completely unmarked by any sign of any kind of emotion–not blank, not void, just as euthymic as her tone of voice had been. She couldn't have been more than five years older than I was, but she had obviously dedicated those five years (plus many more, most likely) to perfecting the choreography of preparing medication for patients. I hoped she enjoyed it. I hoped she enjoyed it for the rest of her life, and that she would never lay awake or look out the window or glance away from the television and wish she'd spent her time practicing something else.

"Here you go," she said, stretching her arm and placing the medicine and a paper cup of water on the widow sill. I crumpled the paper cup after finishing it and mashed it into the other one that had held the medicine, and then handed it back to Mary.

"Thank you," I said before turning to return to my room.

"Wait, Kit. You oughtn't take those things on an empty stomach. Don't you want something to eat before you turn in for the night?"

I shook my head.

"But you haven't eaten all day. You fell asleep the second you finished making your bed this morning."

"I know."

"You're not hungry?"

I shrugged. "I probably am. I'd just rather sleep, that's all."

She sighed and looked at me with a half-worried, half-sympathetic, fully irritating look on her face.

"Alright. Have a good sleep, Kit."

* * *

"You're really not going to say hi to any of us?"

I turned around to face the girl I had ignored while walking back to my room. I'd hoped that, though she'd obviously been staring at me, she might let me pass without saying anything to me.

I looked at her face, but not straight into her eyes. She noticed.

"Won't you look at me?"

My eyes snapped to hers, then immediately away. Her stare was too wide, too intense. Like the stare of someone who was truly crazy.

"Is everyone at this fucking hospital incapable of making eye contact? Jesus Christ."

"Not the staff."

I jumped, not knowing there was another person behind me. Looking over my shoulder, I saw another young girl around my age leaning against the doorframe of the exactly diagonal to that of crazy girl's. They had trapped me, both watching me from either side of where I stood. I could not walk away. I could not escape talking to either or both of them.

"The staff will look at you," the second one continued.

"They're the only ones. Other than you, Grace."

"Maybe that's because everyone is afraid of you," the second one said. She must have been Grace.

I stared down at the floor not knowing which one of them I ought to look at. They continued a conversation over my head, something concerning the first girl's sanity and physical attractiveness.

"So what's your name, anyway?" The first one asked.

"Kit."

"Kip?"

"Kit. Rhymes with Mitt."

"Kit. What is that short for?"

"Nothing," I shrugged. "It's just my name."

The girl scoffed, rolling her eyes and smirking at Grace.

"Where are your parents from? Iowa?"

"No. Dorchester."

She smiled at me, biting her lip and batting her eyelashes. She was attractive in a desperate sort of way, like how you're attracted to girls on reality TV shows. They're only pretty because they want you so bad.

"You from there too?"

I nodded, watching warily as she ran a hand down from the back of her neck, over her chest, and across her stomach. It didn't excite me. Not really.

"You should come in my room and tell me all…about…your childhood."

She had walked toward me and placed her hand on my arm, circling me like prey. Her fingertips grazed along my shirt, dragging from one shoulder to the other, lingering on the bare skin on the back of my neck. She brought her lips close to my ear as she whispered to me, carefully enunciating her last words. And just like that, in the unflattering light of the hallway with someone else watching, I felt a strange longing for her. If she were a girl on the street, someone I saw at the grocery store, I wouldn't look at her twice. If she were a drunk girl at a party trailing her hand along my shoulder in the same way, I would probably roll my eyes at her. But under these circumstances, in this voluntary prison with commonly self-loathing inmates, I became the person that would concede to this girl's wishes. Because she was sad, and I was sad, and we were both lonely. And we could both do with what she was asking for.

She stood in front of me with a hand on either one of my shoulders and smirked, waiting. Her eyes were much lovelier up close than I'd expected them to be–almond shaped and clear and stormy blue. It didn't add up with the rest of her face. From a distance, she looked obviously underfed and unrested and unhappy; up close like this, the details of her face made her look less threatening. Less decayed. Looking at just her face, free of makeup or scars or dragging fingernails, she seemed so much more innocent than the whole picture. She couldn't have been older than eighteen, which means she hadn't been at Pritchett for very long. There were freckles sprayed across her nose and her eyebrows were significantly darker than her hair, like she'd died it one day on a whim and now had to keep up the style to avoid growing it out or cutting it very short. She was a teenager. Judging by her accent, she grew up not too far from where I did. She might have gone to school with my younger sister, been a freshman when my sister was a senior. They might have shared a class together, or been on the basketball team together. They could have been friends. She probably wanted to go to college. She probably had a childhood nickname that numerous people still used to address her.

My longing for her was flesh was gone, replaced with a longing to substitute her sadness with something else. On the basest level, she was regular. Just like I was. Without her slinking body language and choppy, unwashed hair and irregular speech pattern, I couldn't see the madness in this girl. It didn't show on her face.

I stepped backward.

"I'm tired. I ought to go to bed."

Her face fell. She pulled her hands away and pursed her lips at me, her whole body shrinking.

"Fine, you fucking prude. But don't say I never tried to help you out."

"I would never."

I backed away from her slowly, her hands sliding from my shoulders as I did, and nodded to Grace as I passed her. I worried that I'd offended the girl, that my rejection would spur some sort of emotional turmoil inside of her that would take numerous days of work on the part of the hospital staff to properly settle. Before opening the door to my room I looked down towards her room on the other side of the hall and saw her still standing in the hallway, watching me. Her body language was deflated, relaxed, much more slack than it had been when they were standing close. I wasn't sure if she held herself that way because she was disappointed, or if she held herself that way because she was relieved.

I turned the doorknob and stepped into my dark bedroom, thinking it strange that she hadn't told me her name.

* * *

Fake yellow light streamed onto the patch of carpet that my gaze fell on. The window at the foot of my bed was filled with ink where darkness overcame the forest view in the distance. It was not yet morning.

When I looked back at the square of light on the floor, a shadow had appeared in it. I could tell immediately from the curve of its hip and the tilt of its head that the shadow belonged to Violet. I craned my neck around and saw the dark outline of her small frame leaning against the doorframe, arms and ankles crossed. I could hardly see her face, as the light was hitting her back, but I didn't need to light to know that she was watching me. I could feel it.

"You sleep a lot," she said. Her voice was low and hushed, like a child conspiring in the middle of the night before Christmas. Careful not to wake the others. Careful to keep her secret.

"What time is it?" I asked.  
"Some time after two," she said.

"Why aren't you asleep?"

She paused, shrugging.

"I don't really sleep."

"Ever?"

She shook her head.  
"When was the last time you slept?"

"Thursday."

Just the prospect of swinging my legs over the side of my bed exhausted me after twelve near-straight hours of sleep, and she hadn't slept since Thursday. She was able to outpace me walking up a hill, outwit me talking up a storm, and act as though she were too normal to be here, and she hadn't slept since Thursday.

"Won't they catch you out of bed?" I asked.  
"No. They never notice."

They never notice. They don't appear at the sounds of footsteps in the hallway. They pay no mind to a sick girl, fresh out of inpatient, as she stands just outside my bedroom. My mind flashed to all the other things the night staff may not notice. They may not notice me walking out of this bedroom and wandering through the corridors. They may not notice me jimmying the handle to the med room and taking however much I needed to stay asleep for the rest of the week, or for the rest of eternity, depending on just how tired I was. They might not notice me taking Violet into my room and locking it behind me, something that only allowed when one is changing, and keeping her in here for as long as I wanted. They might not notice if I left the building altogether, and they may not notice if I took her with me when I did it.

"Come to bed," I asked, stretching out one arm toward her. "Come lie down with me."  
I could hear her exhale and see her shake her head, but she didn't move away from the door. She just stood there, watching.  
"No. Not tonight."

Not tonight. Not a promise that she might come at another time, but a presentation that such a thing could be possible. That if I'm careful, if I do everything correctly, I may not have to sleep alone every night I spend on Pritchett 3. I consider the possibility that, with a warm body beside mine during the night, I might not have such awful nightmares all the time.

She uncrosses her arms and straightens her legs and I know she's going to leave. I want to come up with something to say that will keep her from going, something funny that would start a conversation or a question she'd have to take a while to answer. But I was too tired and it was too dark and she was already backing away.

"Goodnight," was all I said to her. She reached forward to pull my door closed, and just before it clicked shut and surrounded me in complete darkness, I barely heard her whisper back a reply:

"You too."

* * *

**A/N: Thank you all for the wonderful, flattering comments. I really appreciate reviews–they let me know I'm doing it right and that you're enjoying it! Working on the next chapter just as soon as I wake up from a nap. ;p**


	5. Oliver Thredson

_You pinned me with your black sphere eyes,  
you know that all the rope's untied  
I was only for to die beside…  
Open ears and open eyes, wake up to your starboard bride  
Who goes in and then stays inside  
Oh the demons come, they can subside._

The happiest man at Pritchett 3 was Mumby, the breakfast server. He knew us all by name, every single patient, and remembered which foods we liked best. He sang to us while we waited in line, songs he would later tell me were the same ones his mother used to sing him when he was little, growing up in Haiti. He said they were meant to calm inner troubles and keep the devil away, and a part of me still thinks there's some truth to that.

Every day, he wore an apron that said "Mumby's Kitchen." It had hot chili peppers and flames drawn on it in glittery puff paint, like the uniform for a server at a chain of Mexican restaurants. Everybody loved Mumby. Everybody would line up to be greeted by Mumby—who said "welcome to my world! The world of food!" to every patient, every morning—even if they only got scrambled eggs that they didn't eat. He was the only genuinely, unabashedly positive person that ever came through that building. And the rest of us, who had unhappiness so severe that it needed medical attention, liked to be around that positivity. We could touch happiness, even if we couldn't feel it.

On the morning of my first breakfast at Pritchett 3, Mumby greeted me like I was newborn member of a loving family. He first saw me and his face split into a searing smile, dozens of white teeth on dark, dark skin.

"Welcome to my world! The world of food!"

He reached his arms out to me over the catering table, bending his knees lightly like he could hardly contain his enthusiasm. It didn't feel cheesy, or forced, or over-done. It felt real, like I was being reunited with an old friend who had been waiting ages to see me again.

"And who is this young face I see? A new arrival!"

I smiled back at Mumby, less because I was uncomfortable to be publicly noted and more because he was just so happy, and I feel the phantom of his happiness squeeze my shoulder in comfort.

"What is your name?" I knew his accent was Central American as soon as I heard him, but I couldn't pin exactly which country it was from at first.

"I'm Kit."

"Kit! Welcome, welcome."

Mumby remains the only person at Pritchett 3 who did not ask me to repeat my name for clarification. "What will you have, Kit?"

I hadn't been hungry in weeks, and didn't feel inclined to eat any of the catered food I saw in warm water baths under hot lamps. But I also hadn't eaten anything in nearly two days, and surely some vital organ was beginning to shut down. With the expectant eyes of Mumby settling on my face and a line of impatient inpatients snaking behind me, I knew I didn't have much time to deliberate. So I shrugged and told Mumby to load my plate with his personal favorites.

He smiled at me, pressing a finger to his temple and winking as though we'd just communicated a secret somehow, that he and I knew something that the rest of the kitchen didn't. He pulled a Styrofoam plate from the pile on the catering table and began to scoop food onto it, whistled as he did so. I didn't think people actually whistled.

* * *

"Good morning."

I jumped at the feeling of her breath on my neck and the soft lilt of her voice, spinning around to see Violet's face only inches from mine. Her face broke into a smile when my head whipped to face her, and she laughed, shaking my shoulders.

"Relax. I'm not what you should be afraid of."

"What should I be afraid of, then?" I asked her as she sat down in the chair directly across from mine. She crossed her arms and rested them on the table, nodding towards my plate.

"That food you're about to eat."

I looked down at the pile of food in front of me.

"This?"  
She nooded.

"Mmmhm. It's from a company called Delightful's. My dad used to order from them whenever he had work functions or something, but then he found out that they didn't enforce sanitary processes in their factories and they only use, like, twenty-eight percent actual meat in their products."

"Well, that's…" I dropped the plastic utensils in my hands and leaned back in my chair, sighing. "Delightful."  
She laughed.

I hadn't been hungry in the first place. But now, with the option to eat having been taken away from me, I suddenly wanted the food, despite not having a particularly big appetite for it.

"There's prepackaged containers of cereal in those cabinets back there," she said, pointing over her shoulder to wall of white vinyl cabinets identical that looked identical to the ones in the med room. "The selection will probably be shitty, since the good kinds go a few days after we get groceries, but at least it's edible."  
Fortunately, she watched her hands while she spoke, so I was free to watch her lips move with her words. She seemed to be perpetually smirking, a ghost of a smile on her mouth even when neutral, even when cursing, even when her eyes looked so sad. I wondered, like I had wondered about her skin, if her lips were as soft as they looked. I wanted to know what they would feel like on mine, just for a few moments, unmoving, mouths closed. I just wanted to be familiar with how she could feel.

"How long were you married for?"  
"What?" My eyes snapped to hers, which looked remarkably rested for someone who got so little sleep. I briefly questioned the truth behind what she had told me the night before, then realized that she had no reason to lie to me. She would gain nothing from it.

"How long were you married for?"

"How–"

"You've got a tan line."  
"What…" I knitted my eyebrows together and turned my head, eyeing her suspiciously. "What are you talking about?"

She grabbed my hand and held it up in front of my face, tapping the place where my wedding band used to be.

"Tan line from where you used to wear a ring."

I don't usually remember the first time I touch someone. I couldn't tell you the first time I physically touched my first girlfriend, or Alma, even, or any of the girls in between. But I distinctly remember touching Violet for the first time. How her hand was so much smaller than mine, cold and soft and dry, and how just feeling her skin on my skin sent a shot of something sour and hot down to the pit of my stomach and made me swallow.

"How long were you married for?" She asked, still looking closely at me.

I could tell her. I could tell her everything, if I wanted to. I'd spent the past three weeks reliving the last six years of my life, fiercely and excruciatingly analyzing every single detail, trying to find the exact moment where something went wrong. I needed something to blame, something that I could point to and shout at and peg for all of this. I needed an explanation. So I mulled over my entire relationship with Alma in a desperate attempt to find one. All the stories were well-rehearsed in my head. All the details were ironed out in the synapses. I could summarize it all for her before breakfast was over. But I was too tired.  
"A while."

I pulled my hand away and immediately felt a deflation, a loss. I wanted to grab her hand back from her, hold it against my chest to see if that would intensify the sensation, but I knew I couldn't. The timing wasn't right and I didn't know her well enough and in the time it took me to consider it, to debate whether or not I could get away with it, the grace period had been lifted–it wasn't appropriate anymore. It wouldn't be a continuation, but something forced, something choppy and new and unexpected. So I put my hands on my lap, far from her and her hands and her face and all the other places they wanted to be.

* * *

My therapist looked like my tenth grade history teacher. That was the first thing I noticed when he shook my hand outside his office, introducing himself with a level of enthusiasm that only someone as regular as him could have. Especially this early in the morning.

"You must be Kit," he said. "I'm Oliver. It's a pleasure to finally meet you."

Finally meet me. Like I was a mutual friend he'd heard a lot about at work parties. Like I was someone important, someone famous. I couldn't exactly doubt that he did actually find it a pleasure to meet me, since his voice didn't lack sincerity. His voice didn't lack or contain an excess of anything at all, in fact. It had a finely tuned easy timbre that would have been soft to the touch but not too sweet. Just like Mary, he'd perfected a euthymic tone. It didn't make me uncomfortable, but it didn't soothe me, either.

"Aren't you a doctor? Shouldn't I be calling you doctor something?"

"Would it make you more comfortable to call me doctor?"

A flash of white and a rough cotton blanket on my torso and my arms tied to plastic hospital bed rails, sores blistering where the restraints chafed my skin when I tried to pull them away over and over and over.

"My other doctor said that."

My other doctor. The too-handsome doctor that eventually came in and untied the straps and put ointment on my wrists and wrapped them in bandages and for weeks everyone on the ward thought I'd tried to slit my wrists and I told them no, no. And they were relieved. And I told them no, no, I overdosed. And they became wary of me once again.

"Is it a young doctor thing? You guys think it's trendy to be called by your first name?"

He smiled halfway.

"They say that patients are more likely to open up to doctors when they call them by their first name. Makes them feel more at ease."

"Where do they say that?"

"Harvard."

"Well, this isn't the Harvard hospital."

He smirked at me. Not with disdain or resent, but more with warmth and reverence. Like he'd thought it was funny. Like he liked me.

"I'm Dr. Thredson."

"Nice to meet you. Doctor."

* * *

"So what brings you to Pritchett 3? Why are you here?"

I was sitting across from him in his office, which looked nothing like what I'd expected it to. The ceilings were low and the lights were dim and there was only one painting on the wall, one of a forest during autumn with a mountain towering up behind it. There was a wooden table to my right, and all that was on top of it was a box of tissues and a clock. Other than the chair he was sitting in, the chair I was in, the table, and his desk, the room was bare. Oh, and the carpet. Stupid fucking carpet.

I looked down at the awful thing, tracing its pattern with my eyes and trying to come up with a concise answer. Why was I there?

"Why am I here…" I repeated, looking over at the window beside his desk. It was screened over (all the windows were screened over) and on the other side of it I could only see the topmost branches of trees planted just outside the building. Third floor. All you saw was treetops.

"I'm sad, I guess."

"What are you sad about?"

I shrugged.

"Nothing in particular."

"Really?" He asked. I heard children laughing outside the window, their voices coming in and out with the wind. I thought briefly that it was the whispering of trees, but couldn't long ignore the distinct sentences that came creeping through the screen.

"Where are the children?"

"What?"

"The children. Listen."

He looked to the side and knit his brows, assuring me he was listening intently. His face relaxed with understanding, and for a fraction of a second I wished that he would tell me that he didn't hear any children, that it was all in my mind, that I would need to be sent somewhere else and left alone for years and years. That there was a pill I could take that would make this all disappear. That it would all be over soon, but I could stay here where I'm safe for as long as I wanted.

But he didn't.

"The first floor is a daycare for the children of hospital staff. They play outside sometimes," he said.

"Does it cost them money to send their kids there? The staff?"

"Truthfully, I haven't the slightest idea."

I looked back down at the carpet. It was some sort of oriental print, blue and purple and silver.

"I hate your carpet."

"I hate my carpet, too," he said. I looked up at him and met his eyes for the first time since I'd walked in the office. He smiled at me. I hated that, too.

"So are you really sad about nothing?" He asked. When I didn't answer him, he continued on his own.

"Your file says something about a recent divorce. Do you think that's why you're sad?"

"I think it made my sadness worse."

"So," he said, shifting in his chair, "you were already sad?"

I said the sentence once in my head before saying it out loud to the doctor and felt something heavy sink in my stomach. The truth of what I had finally been able to admit trickled throughout my whole body and seeped out through my pores, enveloping me in a realization I'd been avoiding for a very long time (whether or not I was doing so consciously is open for debate). Then I said it, a short, articulated sentence that felt thick and sinful in my mouth:

"I have always been sad."

"Always?"

I nodded slowly.

"Always."

He was quiet for a really long time. Then he said in a hushed tone,

"I'm really sorry to hear that, Kit."

I didn't say anything back to him. But I don't think he was expecting a response.

"Can we talk about your divorce?"

I shrugged again.

"Sure."

"How long were you married for?"

"A while," I sighed.

"How long is a while?"

"Over a year."

"Was it a happy marriage?"

I laughed.

"I thought so."

I thought so. I thought when I came home at night and laid beside her and she sighed when I pressed my lips to her neck and wrapped my arm around her stomach, thought that when I told her I'd been thinking about her all day, that I'd missed her, that we were happy. I thought that when I told her I loved her every single day and bought her a house and a car and promised, _promised_ that I'd go back to school next year, just next year, just one more year, that she trusted me. That she loved me too, and though things weren't ideal, that we were happy.  
"…but I guess she disagreed."

"Do you mind if I ask you what her name is? Your ex wife?"

His voice was much softer than it had been before and I felt like there was something else in the room, something watching us, waiting for me to say her name so it could rip open my chest and pour in bleach just as soon as I did.

"I don't want to say it out loud."

He nodded slowly.

"Because it hurts too much?"

"No."

I waited for the answer to come to me and he waited for me to say it and we sat there, him looking at me and me looking at his ugly carpet and the words came to my mouth before I could think twice about them.

"If I say her name then it makes all of this real."

The edges of my vision started to blur and the colors all bled into one, purple indistinguishable from blue, blue indistinguishable from black, like laundry water after washing new clothes for the first time. I felt the corners of the room pulling away and the tug of numbness in my stomach and all at once I felt absolutely nothing. I became the hollow remains of someone who once sat in Dr. Thredson's office, a hologram, an outline, little more than a corpse. I was not there. But I do distinctly remember his voice cutting through the nothingness long enough to say,

"This is real, Kit. It's all real."

* * *

**A/N: Thank you for you patience and kind reviews! Please keep on reviewing, I love your feedback. Knowing that you guys are reading and enjoying the story keeps me going.  
****Unimportant piece of information: I almost named this chapter "How Long Have You Been Married?" since that was the central question. But I had to go with something shorter. Oh well.  
Thanks for reading. Review, favorite, follow! xoxoelvis**


	6. Wrists

_there is a place in the heart that  
will never be filled _

_a space_

_and even during the  
best moments  
and  
the greatest  
times_

_we will know it  
we will know it  
more than  
ever_

_there is a place in the heart that  
will never be filled_

_and  
we will wait  
and  
wait_

_in that  
space._

_("No Help For That" by Charles Bukowski)_

* * *

"I don't think I've ever seen you go six hours without sleeping."

I opened my eyes and saw hers only a foot or so away. She was sitting on my bedroom floor, legs crossed, looking at me. The idea that I had no concept of how long she'd been there–and how long she'd been watching me sleep–shifted me from the easy verge sleep to an alert feeling of discomfort and, for no particular reason, shame.

"Violet, what…"

"I got bored, so I decided to come say hi. Figured waking you up couldn't hurt, since all you ever fucking do is sleep."

There was an unpleasant stir in the bottom of my stomach, leaden and defiant, which caused me to pull away from her. I was offended.

"I'm tired."

"Yeah, you and every other American adult."

I paused. I couldn't tell if I wanted to tell her off for being unreasonably harsh or kiss her for the way she looked, her hair spilling over her shoulders and her pale, pale skin glowing even in this bare light, a crack in the door illuminating only a slice of her face. "What are you doing here? Are you even supposed to be in my room?"

"No."

She turned around and backed up against my bed, her shoulders resting on the shelving between the mattress and the floor. She sighed and leaned her head back and I could smell her again. She smelled just as sweet as I'd remembered.

"Seriously, though. If you ever want to leave Briarcliff, you have to stay awake long enough to attend the groups. That's how they assess progress."

"Groups…?"

"Yeah. There are groups every day that everyone on the unit is expected to attend. That's the way it is in every unit, though. Not just on Pritchett 3. Even inpatient does it, though those groups are a waste of fucking time."

She yawned. I sighed. I wanted to reach out and touch her hair, which looked like spun gold in the fake fluorescent light. But I always wanted to touch violet. Her skin, her lips, her hair. It wasn't so much that I wanted to touch her because it would excite her, or me, or both of us. I just wanted to know what it would feel like to touch something that looked so perfect.

"So if you sleep your life away, you'll never get out of here."

"Do you go to groups?"

She nodded. I hesitated.

"Then why are you still here?"

She looked down and smiled at her hands. She didn't answer right away, and I wondered if I'd crossed some unspoken line, stumbled into unsafe territory filled with too-personal questions and stifled secrets. But she didn't refuse to reply.

"Lots of reasons."

She didn't have to say anything else. I knew not to ask what the reasons were. I felt strange asking her how she'd ended up here, anyhow. She had been here longer, knew all the people, knew how the days went on the unit, knew enough about the food to advise me not to eat it. She was higher up than me, had more knowledge on me, was closer to the finish line than I was. I wasn't in any position to ask her to tell me her story. She could ask me, but not the other way around.

"So why are you here, anyway?" She asked me, turning her head slightly so she could see me out of the corner of my eye. I worried that I'd thought too hard about it, that my mulling had been so loud that she'd heard my thoughts. Surely a coincidence like this couldn't happen, and _surely_ she and I didn't think alike.

"I'm just sad, I guess." My voice sounded hoarse, cracked, like I hadn't had anything to drink all day. Then I realized that I hadn't; I'd gone right back to sleep after my therapy appointment. The nurses tried coaxing me out of my room as I was taking off my pants and hospital-issued socks ("no bare feet in the halls. Hospital policy," they said). They told me that there were great things planned for the remainder of the day, things that involved all the other patients, and that it would be a shame for me to miss it. A shame.

"Everyone here is sad. Most people who _aren't_ here are sad. There's gotta be another reason. You're at Briarcliff. And at Pritchett, of all units."

I shrugged. "No. I'm just really, really sad."

She raised an eyebrow and turned to face me, her torso twisted.

"You mean to tell me that you met with admissions, and told them that you were 'really, really sad,' and that was enough for them to deem you highly unstable and in requirement of longterm residential treatment?"

We looked at each other. I said nothing to her, though I could tell from the way she was looking at me they she was expecting further explanation.

"Well, no wonder you have brown eyes. You're full of shit," she said, and I could have sworn that her gaze shifted down to my mouth for a fraction of a second before coming back to my eyes. But maybe that was wishful thinking.

"Something bad happened to you. I know it."

"How?"

"Because I can smell it on you. The way you move like a longtime user of thorazene and talk like you've been lobotomized. I can see it in the way you can't look people in the eye, the way you sleep like a fuckin' newborn. I know something fucked up happened to you. And based off of the scars on your wrists, I'm guessing it involved you being restrained at a hospital."

I looked down at my wrists, down at the red, scabbing welts that were most prominent along their outside edges. She reached out and grabbed my right hand, running a thumb over it the marks on my wrist. It wasn't sore anymore and the scabs were so thick that I could barely feel her fingers on those parts of my skin. I wondered if I'd ever be able to, if my skin would ever heal properly to allow it and if she would ever put her hands there again.

"If you were restrained, that means you were either at risk of hurting the nurses or hurting yourself. Since you're not locked up in a violent or criminal ward, I'm guessing you were hurting yourself instead of someone else. I don't see any patterned scars anywhere on your body, either. So unless you've been self harming on your upper limps or torso, you're not a cutter. Besides, nearly every cutter does some damage on their wrists and forearms at some point, so we can definitely rule out self harm. Which leaves us with attempted suicide. That's why you're here."

I watched her inspect the scabs, carefully consider their curl around my wrist. The gesture was cold and scientific, like she was a doctor doing this for the millionth time.

"Why'd you even ask if you already knew?" I asked. I desperately needed a drink of water.

She smirked, not looking up from my wrist.

"I just wanted to see if I was right."

She shifted her position to face me without having to twist her body, legs crossed in front of her and chin resting on the edge of my bed. She released my wrist.

"So why did you do it?" She asked, tapping the blistered skin and then tracing invisible patterns on my blanket. She didn't look at me, but rather gave me the chance to think of a good enough answer–or rather, one I was comfortable giving. I took advantage of it.

_"Why would you do something like this to yourself?"_

_She was crying. I could hear her sobs, broken and heaving, over the poor connection of the hospital phone. I was angry that she was crying. She had no right to be sad about this, to be confused, to mourn it. It was her fault. It was all her fault._

_"Kit?"_

_"What?" I could have tried harder to soften my tone. I could have taken the edge off of it, acknowledged that this was hard for everyone and of course she was upset. But I didn't want to._

_"Did you hear me?"_

_I didn't say anything._

_"I asked you why you did this to yourself."_

_I imagined delivering the perfect answer to her in person, saying something scathing that would twist the knife, something that she'd hear over and over in her head for the rest of her life, something that would keep her from ever being fully happy ever again. In my perfect fantasy, she'd be on her knees, or in a chair, or even leaning on me, since the weight of grief would be unbearable. She would be weeping, her perfect face ruined by streaked makeup and sadness and guilt, contorted from crying. She'd beg me to tell her why I did it, why, why, why I would do something so horrible, so desperate, so permanent. Ask me what could have possessed me enough to give me the strength to go through with that. And I would tell her. I'd tell her the truth, and I'd say it in a cool, uncaring tone, and I'd shake her off of me as I walked away saying something cruel and unfair and uncalled for. Something that would hurt her. Something that would make her hate herself, because no matter how badly I wanted to, I couldn't._

_But life wasn't perfect and my fantasy had ended months ago and I didn't have her on her knees in front of me. I had her crackled voice on the other end of the phone and not enough courage to say something with any real bite._

_"You know why, Alma."_

"Kit?"

I looked up at her. I was back in the dark, under the layers of thin hospital blankets, looking at Violet.  
"Did you hear me?"

An echo of a question I'd heard dozens of times before. Did you hear me? Did you hear me? Can you hear me? Are you paying attention? Are you even here with me? Hello? _Hello?_

"What?" I asked. I couldn't remember what she had asked me. I couldn't remember the last thing she'd said, or that I'd said. Time had slowed all the way down to where it was barely moving, and now it was barreling back at me in full force all at once, the gaps left by the breach in chronology being filled without any sort of discrimination or organization. Just a rush of everything, all at once.

"I asked you why you tried to kill yourself."

I heard the words as they were, but the concept didn't stick in my brain. They repeated over and over in my brain, my mind unable to wrap around the concept. Like having to reread the same sentence again and again because you're just not getting it, you just can't pay attention, it's just not sinking in.

"Does this happen to you often?" She asked, running her hand up my arm and gripping it just below the crook of my elbow. I looked down at my arm, then back up at her, then back down again. "The zoning out thing you've been doing since you got here. Is it a common occurrence?"  
I shrugged. My tongue felt thick in my mouth and my brain felt clouded, cottoned, muffled.

"Yeah, kind of."

"Hey," she said, shaking my arm in an attempt to jostle me into attention. It worked partway, and I brought my eyes up to hers again, sighing.

"What?"  
I sounded tired. Irritated. Like I wanted her to leave. I didn't, in fact, want her to go anywhere. On the contrary; I wanted her to come closer, to get under the million thin blankets and curl up next to me and let me touch her skin and her hair and her lips and learn everything about her, know why she was here and how she smelled the way she did and what it felt like to be her. But I couldn't focus. I couldn't latch onto anything.

"Do you have this happen to you a lot?"

"Yeah," I said. "Yeah. I have ADD."

She leaned back a little bit and softened her grip on my arm, looking downward, and I immediately recognized the look on her face. It was one that was universal, one that at some point came up for almost every person I ever came in close contact with: the face of knowing that I am not well, and now knowing how to tell me. I wish she would. In here, unlike everywhere else I'd been, it would be alright.

"You ought to tell your doctor. It could be something else."

I took in a silent, deep breath and nodded like I had seriously considered what she was saying. Maybe I would, once I gave it sincere thought, once I reflected on this conversation and relived every single thing she said and did and every way she moved and shifted–which I was bound to do. But right now, in the middle of the night in the dark, I couldn't think of anything but sleeping.

I waved my hands towards my body, gesturing for her to come up on the bed.

"Come lie down with me."

She looked over her shoulder at the clock that was visible in the crack in the door, then turned back to my and shook her head.

"No. They'll start checks any minute now."

"Checks?"

"They check on us every hour. Make sure we're in bed, alive, not bleeding, etcetera."

"I had no idea."

She laughed, a piece of hair falling in her face as she did.

"How could you? You sleep through practically everything."

"Not everything," I said.

And with an uncharacteristic amount of courage, I reached out and touched her face. The skin on her face was as cold and soft and dry as it had been her hands, and I traced the line of her cheekbone, the curve of her chin, the dip of her neck, the edge of her shoulder. She closed her eyes, and I thought for a moment that maybe I'd made her feel what she makes me feel. Maybe she felt the same tightening in her chest and dropping in her stomach that happened to me whenever she touched me. But her lips stayed clothes and she sighed–not in longing, but in exhaustion. Once my hand had trailed down the length of her arm and over the back of her hand she took my wrist again, looking back down at it.

"These look good, Kit. They're healing. Don't start picking at them."

"Stay."

She released my wrist and pushed away from the bed, getting to her feet.

"I'm going to try to sleep."

"Violet, please stay."

Her shoes made no sound as she crossed the carpet to my door. The slice of light grew, yellow and bright and suddenly all over me, and she closed it behind her all the way as she went. And just as quickly as I'd been awoken, I was back in the darkness, alone, left with nothing but the burning memory of her skin on my wrists and the smell of her hair lingering in my blankets.

* * *

**A/N: Once again, thank you all for supporting this story! Reviews are read, loved, and highly appreciated. **


	7. Crying

_Kill this evil, buried dead  
Stirred awake inside my head  
Heal this worried mind of mine  
Demon traces in these little lines _

_Oh, what have you done to me? _

_Beautiful surrounded eyes  
But darkness rots away that little line  
The voice of your child speaks no words just  
Cries and cries and cries and cries and cries  
and cries and cries and cries and cries and  
cries and cries and cries and cries and cries _

_-_Her Vore_ by Coma Cinema_

People are funny about crying. They almost never cry as an immediate reaction to something. If something or somebody bothers a person, if they hear or see or experience something hurtful or painful, they hardly ever cry in that very moment. They wait for hours or days or weeks to let it out when they're by themselves alone somewhere, far from the earshot and scrutiny of others. And if they don't let it out after a while, keep it inside boiling like a teakettle, eventually one day it all comes bursting out of them from what looks like nowhere. That is, of course, the worst-case scenario. And that's what Alma used to do.

Alma can't have babies. That's part of the reason she left me; the stress of us getting that news together permanently marred our relationship. When she first found out, she took the news like she was listening to somebody give her directions to the nearest gas station. Her affect was completely neutral, no facial changes, no tensed body language, nothing. I had squeezed her hand and choked back tears when we'd first gotten the news, looking at the clock on the wall and pretending to be interested in the time so nobody would look directly in my eyes. If somebody had looked me directly in the eyes, I would have broken down crying. But I'm more sensitive than she is.

One night, three weeks after we got the news about Alma's infertility, I heard her laughing in the kitchen. It was thick and consistent and I liked hearing it echo through the house. I smiled at the thought of her laughing, warmth spreading through my chest. She hadn't laughed in ages. Maybe she'd heard something funny on the radio, or remembered something she'd seen online or a witty comment her friend made at lunch. I continued to listen to the sound of her laughing, steady, deep, consistent. Too consistent. I listened more closely, my ears creeping up and my brow furrowing in concentration, and it didn't take long for me to realize that she was not laughing.

When I found her in the kitchen, she was sobbing over the sink. She had a Teflon pan in her hand and had left the stove on, burning at high heat right behind her.

"Honey," I rushed over to her, shutting off the gas and trying to take the pan from her. When I wrapped my hand around the one of hers that was holding the handle, she snapped.

"DON'T," she shouted, "DO NOT TOUCH IT."

"Honey," I repeated, trying to soothe her. "What's going on?"

"I BURNED IT! I BURNED DINNER!" She was in hysterics, her entire body shaking with the sobs. I looked down at the pan and saw two piece of fish charred to it, blackened by too much time on the heat.

"It's alright," I cooed. "It's alright."

"It's not alright," she said. Her voice had lowered, but it was still loud enough for me to worry about the neighbors getting the wrong idea. "This is not _alright_, Kit."

"We'll make something else for dinner," I offered. But she just started weeping again, her lithe arms shaking every time a sob came out of her mouth. It was alarming to see sadness overcome somebody so suddenly and so violently, and up until that point I hadn't really seen anything like it. My mom had cried at my dad's funeral, but it was the tame Irish Catholic kind of crying that can be wiped away with a few tissues. I'd never known that unbearable, uncontrollable sadness existed. And here it was, right in front of me, overcoming the only thing on this earth that I loved.

"I burned it," she said, looking down at the blackened fillets through her puffy eyes. "I burned it."

I slid my arm around her shoulder and expected her to cower away when I did. Instead she turned toward me, letting the pan fall into the sink with a loud _thud_, and buried her face in my chest. I held her even tighter, trying to squeeze the sadness out of her. Naively, in that moment, I thought that my physical comfort and words of love could alleviate the depths of her sadness. I thought that shushing her and calling her baby and telling her I was there would make it all better, but it couldn't. Nothing I did was enough.

"We can't have babies," she said, her voice just above a whisper. "I'm never going to have my own baby."

I rubbed her back and couldn't think of anything to say, so I just kissed the top of her head for twenty minutes until she stopped crying.

That's the thing–we don't cry at what's really bothering us. We wait, we let it build, let it fester in the base of our stomach until something is seemingly heavy on our hearts that we break. We don't cry about lost babies; we cry about burned fish.

* * *

In my case, I cried about not being able to take my night medications.

It was my twelfth day at Pritchett 3, and I still spent every night reliving all the mistakes I'd made with Alma. None of the medications they'd given me had effectively stabilized my mood, and none of them could possibly make me forget the things I'd need to unlearn in order to heal; the sound of her laughing, the image of her lips moving when she told me she loved me, the smell of her hair. Because no medications had worked within the first week, I got miffed and began to refuse medications altogether. As a result of this, I spent hours at night thinking and rethinking and rethinking all the things I could have done differently to make Alma stay, all the things I could have done to make her want me. All the things that would have made her need me. I went down this spiral every single night for hours on end until I eventually fell asleep.

But on my twelfth night at the hospital, the ruminations had gotten so out of control that I couldn't stand it. I lay in bed gripping my hair, trying desperately to get my mind to slow down, but nothing worked. None of the "skills" they'd suggested I use made any difference. Counting all the colors in the room, focusing on my breath, listing all the words I could think of that began with the letter A, none of it made a difference. None of it abated my pain. All I could do was lie in that bed and suffer, wishing desperately that I had a way to make it end. To make it dark. To make it stop.

Then I remembered that I did. Though I typically refused them, I had night medications accessible to me that would make me fall asleep within a matter of minutes. Without any effort, without any alcohol or sex or exercise or the normal things that wore me out, I could fall asleep in a matter of minutes. Have complete darkness, dreamless sleep that was void of Alma.

I went up to the office at the front of the unit, which was located directly across from the staircase that led out of the building. The staircase, of course, was locked. But still, sometimes I'd stand in front of the door and look out the narrow window and envision myself walking down the stairs, out the door, and into the forest beyond the hospital grounds. Going nowhere.

"Can I get my night meds?" I asked the counselor that was sitting on the computer on the other side of the partition. It was a young girl, maybe a year or two younger than me, who I hadn't seen before. She was playing Farmville.

"The nurses just went into change of shift," she, not looking up from the computer screen. "You'll have to wait about an hour."

I blinked at her. I felt panic rise from the base of my stomach, the desperation that accompanies attempts to get others to see things your way. I leaned forward a little bit over the partition and raised my eyebrows, trying to seem warm and charming.

"I just…I tried to go without them, and it didn't work. And I'm really tired. I'd very much like to sleep."

She sighed. Not an impatient sigh, just a tired, sympathetic sigh that I was almost certain was fake.

"That sounds really awful. Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do to get your meds at this time."

I didn't move from the spot. I just froze there, looking at her, hoping that she'd turn around and see the agony on my face and spare me some mercy. But she didn't even move an inch in her seat.

I flattened my hands on the partition and looked down, trying to think of an alternative. If I hurt myself, if I did something dramatic, would they pay attention and give me what I wanted? Or would it just get me in trouble, and sent back to a more intensive unit? Probably the latter. Definitely the latter. Was there another staff member I could ask? I leaned back a bit and looked down either side of the hall, but the only person that was there was a cleaning lady. She couldn't help me, and the practical teenager on the computer couldn't help me, and I couldn't help myself.

"There's really nothing you can do?"

"I'm afraid there isn't," she said. She still didn't look at me.

I sank into a chair beside the office door and stared ahead of me. I felt my entire body sink from the inside out, a boundless feeling of dread and doom spreading from my core to the tips of my fingers and toes, and I knew what was coming before it came, like the change in wind before a storm. The sense of doom turned icy cold and my vision began to blur with tears and my face contorted and here it comes, here it is, there it goes. I don't remember hearing myself cry or feeling the tears on my face. I just remember putting my elbows on my knees and my head in my hands and letting the sobs shake my whole body, just like they'd done to Alma.

Too much. It was all too much.

I felt hands on my wrists and I jumped, looking up. And there she was, crouching down in front of me, looking at me with her head slightly crooked. Violet.

"Where did you come from?" I asked her.

In my brief moment of shock, she took the opportunity to reach out and put her hands on my face, rubbing the salt and tears and sadness from my skin and wiping it on her dress.

"Why are you crying?" Her voice was light with sympathy.

"I'm tired," I whimpered. "I'm tired and I want to go to bed and they can't give me my medications because of change of shift."

Her hands trailed down my neck and rested on my shoulders. I shuddered and sighed, closing my eyes.

"No, Kit. Why are you crying?"

_Tell her. Just tell her. You've wanted to tell her for ages now, since you got here, but never thought there was a right time. And here she was, right in front of you, asking you to tell her exactly what was wrong. Tell her. She won't leave. You know she won't leave just because of this._

I didn't know that for sure. But I was too tired and too upset to fight it.

I shrugged. "I just don't know what I did."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know what I did to make her stop loving me."

She didn't say anything. I liked that. She didn't tell me that she was sorry, or that that was awful, or even ask me who I was walking about. She just squeezed my shoulders and brushed my hair out of my eyes and let my cry.

After a few minutes she got up ad sat on the chair beside mine. My crying had slowed down by then, but it was still coming out in silent heaves. My head was starting to ache. All I wanted to do was go to sleep.

"Come here," Violet said, gesturing for me to come closer to her. "Put your head on my lap."

I swallowed. I wanted to look her in the eye and thank her, but I didn't like the thought of what my face looked like. I remembered what Alma looked like when she was finished crying: raw and defeated and weak. I didn't want Violet to see me like that.

I put my head down on the soft fabric of Violet's dress and closed my eyes, swallowing again. I started to cry on her dress and apologized, but she told me it was okay. So I continued.

I felt a familiar sense of comfort with my head on her lap like that I knew it was just a reaction to being physically comforted for the first time in months, especially at a point of such extreme emotional vulnerability, but the connection I felt with Violet in that moment was stronger than any sexual connection I'd had with a woman in my life. It was as though my chest was opening up and expanding, reaching out to try to grab hers. It felt nice. It felt like home.

I breathed in deeply and her smell came over me again, sweet and mild, like flowers. I chuckled.

"I didn't expect you to be laughing," she said, reaching out and combing her fingers through my hair. I sighed again.

"It's funny," I murmured, mesmerized by the chills shooting down my spine from her petting my head. "Funny that a girl named Violet smells like flowers."

She breathed out quickly and heavily through her nose, her version of a laugh. Then she continued to run her fingers through my hair, humming a song I didn't recognize.

I didn't wind up needing my sleep meds. I fell asleep like that on Violet's lap after five minutes.

* * *

**A/N: I'm soooo sorry it took me so long to update. I've been dealing with a lot over the past few months, and as a number of you guessed, I'm writing about a place like this from experience–I'm actually in a hospital right now due to how poorly I've been doing over the past few months. Your continued support and positive feedback is invaluable to me, and I appreciate each and everyone one of you. Thank you. I will try my absolute best to have the next chapter up soon! xoxo elvis**


	8. Judy Martin

_"He is alone in his house out there, far far away,  
He sleeps with his eyes open  
He was so sad last night in his house out there,  
He took my hand, and whispered  
I like the old style in his house out there,  
His windows are nice, his garden is wonderful  
But these wonderful ideas come from him, he will fill this house,  
He takes my hand, and whispers:  
"I'll drown when I see you"  
His tears drop so fast in his house out there  
We try to get out, his house took our hands and smiled  
"You'll never escape from this sad sad house", I take his hand, we sink  
I'll drown when I see you  
I'll drown when I see you  
I'll drown when I see you  
I do" _

_-_I'll Drown _by Sóley_

* * *

The next day in his office, Dr. Thredson put on his horn-rimmed glasses and crossed his legs and opened up a notepad and asked me how it made me feel to cry for the first time in half a decade. I just shrugged.

"Weird," I said. "Like I was somebody else, somebody that I wasn't."

"Like you were disconnected from your own body?" He asked, speaking a little bit too quickly for my comfort. Like he was excited.

I shook my head slowly and blinked, trying to focus on the feeling I'd had the previous night. I knew I'd begun to cry because they wouldn't give me my medication, and I wanted to sleep because I was so tired of thinking about Alma. But I couldn't access the memories of the sadness, of the anguish that drove me to have such an acute breakdown. All I could remember of the night before was a purple skirt and the smell of flowers and fingers in my hair and the hum of a sad song I'd never heard before. No pain.

"No, I was connected to my body. Everything just seemed…weird. Like it wasn't real. Like I was dreaming."

Dr. Thredson raised his eyebrows and looked down at his notepad, furiously jotting down notes with his quick hand. I didn't like how quickly he was moving, how he had an agitated edge to him, like he was waiting for something bigger to happen. I cleared my throat.

"Does that, uh…does that mean something?"

"It could," he replied, not looking up from his notepad. "But there's not way of knowing without doing some further testing."

"…testing?"

I guess Thredson heard the apprehension in my voice because he looked up and smiled warmly at me, clicking his pen again and tilting his head.

"Does that make you nervous? That we'd have to do testing?"

I shrugged and looked down at his hideous carpet. Testing. All I could imagine was a dozen electrodes glued to my head and a doctor holding up ink blots in front of my face, asking me what I saw.

"I don't know. A little bit."

"Why does it make you nervous?"

"Because then somebody might find out that there's something seriously wrong with me."

Thredson reclicked his pen and started writing again.

"_Wrong_is a judgment work, Kit, and it's totally objective. Having another mental disorder does not make you wrong."

"You know what I mean," I murmured, looking over at his window. The leaves were starting to change colors.

Thredson continued on with his questioning, looking up at me to gauge my reactions.

"Says here on the pass-on that you were found sleeping with your head on the lap of another patient. Violet."

I felt a flush creep up my neck and into my face, spreading across my cheeks. Violet.

"What's going on with her?" Thredson prodded, peering at me.

"Nothing is going on with her." It was the truth, its meaning thick with two weights: to Thredson, it meant that there was nothing going on between Violet and me. Plain and simple. No hidden value to my words. To me, the statement that nothing was going on between us was teeming with disappointment. There was nothing between me and Violet, but I desperately wished there were.

Thredson looked at me without saying anything, an expectant look on his face, but I wasn't going to tell him anything. My feelings for Violet were a secret I didn't want to share with anyone; not only did I want to avoid rejection and scrutiny, but I also felt a sort of sacredness and wholesomeness attached to my feelings for her. I didn't want to share it because I wanted to keep it pure. I wanted our relationship, whatever it was, to exist only as it existed in my mind. I didn't want anyone else's opinions tainting the fantasy Violet that lived in my imagination.

Of course, I knew there must be something wrong with her, something dark and troubling enough that would land her in a place like this. And I knew that, soon enough, somebody would reveal to me what that darkness was. But I wanted to keep that unveiling at bay for as long as I could, keep Violet just as she was in mind for as long as possible. I was in denial, and I knew it, and I didn't have a single desire to get out of it.

"Do you think your feelings for Violet echo your feelings for Alma, or is it a different kind of connection?"  
I looked up at Thredson and knew that shock must have been painted on my face based off of the small smile he had. I liked Dr. Thredson, and we worked well together, but he could be a smug bastard. There was nothing he loved more than being right.

"Who said we had a connection?"

"You did, in so many words," Thredson said, waving his hand to gesture at ambiguity. "You don't fall asleep crying on the lap of a girl who you don't have a connection with. And you certainly don't blush when you hear the name of someone you feel nothing for."

"I didn't blush."

"Kit." I looked back up at the doctor, whose face had softened. He pursed his lips and tilted his head, his eyes neutral. "You gotta be honest with me, Kit. How do you feel about her?"

_"Tell me, Kit. How do you feel about me?"  
I pulled at my collar. It was too hot and too dark in this restaurant. I understand the concept of ambient lighting, but I could hardly see Alma's face through the dimness.  
"Is it hot in here?"  
"No, it's just you. And you're deflecting."  
"Deflecting?"  
"Tell me how you feel about me."  
Her voice was velvety soft, like something expensive you buy at a department store for a pretty girl you want to impress. A girl like Alma. Alma. While the room may have been dark, her eyes shone through, bright and full of some kind of glint I'd never seen before. I loved her. I love her. I'd always loved her. But how do you say that to somebody who is so clearly out of your league? What was she even doing here with me, a gas station attendant with a thick accent who had dropped out of UMASS, when she could be dating any Harvard prick she wanted? Was she fucking with me? Was this a bet?  
"I like you a lot, Alma."_

"How do you feel about Violet, Kit?"

I shrugged.

"I like her a lot, I guess."

Thredson shook his head.

"Come on, you gotta give me a little more than that."

_"No, Kit," she said, shaking her head. "Give me more than that. I mean, how do you _feel _about me? What do you feel in your body when you see me? What do you think when you look at me?"  
I looked down at the table and played with the tongs on my salad fork. Salad fork, appetizer fork, dinner fork.  
"Too many forking forks at this table, right?" I laughed and looked back up at her.  
She only scowled.  
"Kit."  
"Alma."  
She didn't say anything else. She just had this look on her face that screamed _stop fucking around and just tell me. _So I did. I took in a slow breath and ran my fingers over the tips of the tongs and I closed my eyes and I told her. I just told her.  
"I love you, Alma. I always have."  
She let out a deep, shuddered breath that made her collarbones stick out and her lips parted and she looked to the side and blinked a lot and god, she was so beautiful. I love her I love her I love her and now that I'd said it I wanted to say it again, to scream it so that everyone in the restaurant and the city and the entire state could hear that I loved her. I loved her.  
"Is that what you wanted to hear?"  
She looked up at me and smiled. And I can't really tell you exactly what that smile looked like. I'll never be able to describe it to you. All I can tell you is that based on that smile, I knew that it had been exactly what she wanted to hear. And that everything was going to be alright._

"She makes me feel good," I said. "I haven't felt good in a long time."

"Do you think maybe you should tell her that?" He asked me. I just shrugged. My brain was stuck on the flashback, my eyes seeing only dim lighting and smelling rich Italian food. I did not like it. I did not want it. I did not want to feel what I was feeling anymore. Not the love I had for Alma or the lust I had for Violet or the ache I had in realizing that neither of those feelings were requited. I didn't want to feel anything anymore. So I allowed myself not to.

Thredson didn't push me any further. He figured I'd continue on my own, but I didn't. I just stared down at the carpet and let my vision blur out, let the numbness take me, let myself get submerged into a pool of sinking collarbones and glinting eyes and purple dresses that smell like flowers.

"I'm afraid that's all the time we have for today," Thredson said after god knows how many empty minutes. I was too numb to say thank you as I got up and left his office.

* * *

I was sure that 303A was Violet's room. I had seen her go in there and lie down on the bed closest to the window countless times–without closing her eyes, of course, since sleep never seemed to visit her. I continued to knock on the door, my knuckles beginning to get sore, and called out her name.

"Violet," I said, "Violet, I know you're in there. I've checked everyplace else on the unit for you."

Silence.

"Why are you ignoring me?"

Silence.

"Violet?"

Silence. Knock knock.

"Violet?"

I called a little bit louder.

"Violet?"

A little louder. Knock knock knock.

"Violet?"

Louder. Knock knock knock knock pound pound pound–

"VIOLET."

"Excuse me!"

I spun around suddenly to see an older woman scowling at me, holding the checks clipboard to her chest and an obvious grudge against me.

"What on earth do you think you're doing?"

Her accent was as thick as mine and her eyes just as fierce. She was obviously from around the same place I was, and had spent a lot of time there. Living in that part of the city makes your eyes look a certain way that's completely distinguishable from everyone else.

"I'm sorry," I said, my voice returning to a low, soft cadence. "I was just looking for Violet Harmon. She isn't anywhere on the ward and she's not answering her door, and I'm just concerned that she–"

"Who are you?" She asked me suddenly, her eyes narrowing.

"Kit Walker," I said, stepping forward and extending my hand. She reached for it slowly and shook it, her hands warm and soft like my grandmother's.

"Well, Mr. Walker, I'm Judy Martin and I'm the head Nurse here at Pritchett 3. I've been on vacation for the past couple of weeks, which is why I have not been around to bear witness to your…" she looked me over, her eyes inspecting every inch of what she could see on me. My neck heated under the scrutiny. "…behaviors."

I nodded.

"It's–it's lovely to meet you ma'am. And I'm sorry to have been so disruptive, I'm just worried that something has happened to Violet."

Judy's face softened immediately. Sympathy flooded her eyes and the corners of her mouth turned down.

"I mean, she and I talk pretty regularly and it's just…it's just not like her to ignore me like this." The stricken and saddened look on the Nurse's face distracted me and I stumbled over my words, occupied with the grief in her eyes. Something bad had happened. Violet was not safe.

"Do you know something I don't?" I asked her. I felt the muscles in my face tense up and my eyebrows come together, anticipating the worst.

Judy took in a breath and looked down at the floor, then back up at me. She squared her shoulders like she was trying to muster up the courage to deliver news that I wouldn't want to hear.

I had properly read her body language. That was exactly what she was doing.

"Violet has been transferred to CB1 for the time being."

"…CB1?" I tried to tamp down the relief in my voice, which I could hear over the worry I wanted to feign. She was safe. She was somewhere else, but she was safe. The darkest place inside of me, the place that envisions the worst scenarios and prepares to hear the most gruesome of news, had expected a much more severe story from Judy.

"Clinical Building, floor one. It's an inpatient unit here."

"Why is she there?"

Judy swallowed and looked down at her charts, flipping through the pages. I knew she already knew why Violet had gone. She knew I knew it, too.

"Looks like Violet engaged in some target behaviors that were deemed dangerous and severe enough to warrant stepping up her level of care," Judy said. "Her treatment team sent her there at about six o'clock this morning."

"What's a target behavior?"

"There's no way of knowing when she'll be out, and–"

"What did she do? What happened to her? "

"–I'm not really able to disclose that much–"

"Can't you at least tell me what _happened_to her?"

"–information about her admission, since it's up to her to tell you that."

"Is there any way I would be able to visit her, or something?"

Judy sighed and straightened her back, then exhaled slowly through her nose. I could tell from the way she was looking at me that I no longer had the grace of anonymity on my side; she had, in some capacity, gotten to know me, and she didn't like what she'd seen so far. Her blond hair was pulled so tightly into a bun that the skin of her forehead was extremely taught, giving her eyes the permanent illusion of squinting in resentment. Or maybe she just resented me.

"That's something you'll have to discuss with your therapist individually. But if you can get a pass approved, yes. CB1 allows visitors from other units."

She looked back down at her chart and flipped through it again mindlessly.

"Besides, Violet can tell you what happened herself if you go visit her. What was your name?"

"Walker," I said, and Judy ticked off my name on the checks list.

"Nice meeting you, Mr. Walker."

Her eyes remained on mine as she walked past me down the hall and began to open the doors of the other patients, knocking lightly and peering in to see if they were there, then checking off their names if they were.

"Nice meeting you too, Judy," I murmured before turning and heading in the opposite direction.

* * *

**A/N: Once again, thank you all for the positive reviews. They fuel my fire to keep going, so please keep posting them! Also thank you all for your compassion and sympathy, as well as your patience with how long it took me to update. Your thoughtfulness and understanding is so sweet, and I appreciate it a lot. I hope you like this update, and hopefully there will be another one not too far behind! Enjoy xoxo elvis**


	9. Clinical Building

_I got a stone where my heart should be_  
_And nothing I do will make you love me_  
_I'd leave this time, break all my ties_  
_Be no more use for any disguise_  
_Lies, lies, lies, lies_

_I wanna die without pain_  
_All this deception, I just can't maintain_  
_The sun, moon, stars in the sky_  
_It'd hurt me too bad if you said goodbye_  
_Lies, lies, lies, lies_

_-_Lies_ by The Black Keys _

The phone cord hit the side of the booth as the rings buzzed through the earpiece, _ring, ring, ring.  
_  
"Hello?"

"Hi, yeah," I cleared the cobwebs from my throat. "Hi, I'm here to visit Violet Harmon?"

I was in a large square waiting room with glass walls that separated me from CB1. I tapped my finger against the receiver, looking up and around to try and find somebody on the other side that looked like they could help me. But all I saw was an empty corridor

"Okay, we'll buzz you right in."

I stood too close to the thick metal door as I waited to hear the buzzing and click that indicated it had been unlocked. I should have stepped back, should have made room for possible people to exit before I walked through. But I was too anxious. I needed to get on the other side of the door so I could get to the unit so I could get to Violet. I needed to get to Violet.

A nurse in civilian's clothes greeted me at the end of the long corridor. She was a young, lovely woman with a long brown braid trailing over her shoulder and thin black eyeliner rimming her brown eyes. She could have been a model, an actress, a superstar. She did not belong as an MHS at Briarcliff Hospital. She smiled warmly as I stepped into the corridor and raised my eyebrows, acknowledging her.

"Hi, you're here for Violet, right?"

I nodded.

"Does she know you're coming?"

I shook my head.

"No, she doesn't. At least I don't think she does."

She nodded and smiled, closed-mouth. She asked me if I had anything on my belonging that was sharp, or that could shatter. I flinched a little bit, feeling offended but not entirely sure why.

"No. Why would that matter?"

"It's a safety precaution. No glass bottles, Swiss army knives, anything that could possibly used for self-harm?"

Self-harm. The term repeated itself in my head over and over like a parrot that had only learned the one phrase, squawking at me incessantly. _Self-harm. Self-harm. Self-harm._

"Does Violet do that to herself?" I blurted out, blinking furiously at the pretty nurse. She looked up at me suddenly, shock painting her face for a brief moment before her features softened into a look that was undeniably full of sympathy. She felt bad for me. She felt bad that I didn't know, like it was common knowledge, like everyone knew. And maybe everyone did.

"I'm gonna go check to see if Violet is available, and then I'll come get you if she is. Alright?"

I nodded, swallowing. Even her voice was thick from how bad she felt for me. It made a blush creep up into my neck to know someone pitied me like that, that I was so foolish and naïve, that I hadn't figured it out on my own. I was ashamed.

"Don't go anywhere, okay? If you need anything, just ask for Teresa. That's me."

I nodded again. I didn't even look at her. Too embarrassed.

I sank into one of the thin vinyl armchairs that was near the main entrance as Teresa walked away, then began to rack my brain for a memory of something that would indicate that I hadn't totally missed out on something. Had she ever worn sleeves short enough for me to see anything? No, she always wore long worn-in cardigans over her dresses. Had she ever mentioned anything, said anything, insinuated that this was something that she did? Had she ever talked about it in group? No, no. Violet had kept this a secret. She had kept it a secret from me and the rest of the residents at Pritchett 3. I felt a pang hit the base of my stomach and spread downward, making me ache. She had kept a secret from me. She had deliberately chosen not to share an important part of her life with me. It would have made sense that she keep it from the others, that she not tell the rest of the people who lived there. But things were different between Violet and me. We talked about things, we shared things, we thought together. We were friends. We were good friends. And this isn't the sort of thing you keep from your good friend.

My head hung and my pulse raised as I was hit with the realization that maybe I'd misjudged my relationship with Violet. Maybe things weren't as they seemed to be between us, and that we weren't friends at all. Maybe she didn't feel the same way about me as I did about her.

"Kit, what the hell are you doing here?"

My head snapped up to see Violet coming toward me, walking down the corridor of the unit with a look of incredulous anger on her face. The rage in her eyes was the first thing I noticed; the second was the white bandages that were wrapped around both her forearms. The gauze was wound so thick that she looked like somebody who had two white gun barrels attached to their arms. I looked back up at her face. She was frowning.

"To see you," I mumbled.

"Well you shouldn't have. I don't want you here." She turned to Teresa. "I don't want him here."

Teresa looked between Violet and me, obviously fumbling to make a decision, not knowing whether or not to believe Violet. I certainly didn't.

I suddenly became uncontrollably angry; that Violet had lied to me, that she'd kept a secret from me, that she'd done something like this to herself in the first place, that she was being ungrateful that I'd come to see her, that she was being rude to the nurse. The flush in my face deepened and my pulse got even quicker and my face twisted into an agitated grimace.

"If you don't want me here why'd you make this lady bring you all the way down here? Why didn't you just tell her to make me leave when she came to get you?"

I was still bitter from the realization that Violet may not like me, and it was fueling me to be far harsher than I would have been in any other situation. I stood from the chair and walked up to her, standing closer than I should have, and stared down at her. It wasn't until then that I noticed how much taller I was than her.

"Tell me to leave, if you want me to so badly."

Violet stared back up at me, the fire and rage and resentment burning at the back of her brown eyes, challenging me. And I was just heartbroken and angry enough to challenge her right back.

"Come on, Violet. If you want me to leave, then tell me to leave."

There was a delay, a hesitation. She had to think about it. She had to consider it. Eventually she spat in my face, told me to get out, told me she never wanted to see my smug face ever again. And I listened. I wasn't going to fight. But I smiled as I turned around to walk down the long corridor and waved to Teresa, satisfied with the hesitation I heard before Violet told me to leave. She didn't actually want me to go. She wanted me to stay, and had to collect herself long enough to muster up the courage to kick me out. And that was enough for me.

It didn't feel as cold as I stepped outside to walk back to Pritchett 3. I smiled as I prepared myself for the walk back across campus, back over the hill and into Pritchett, where they would not give me another independent walk until 24 hours had passed. I barely got three feet when I heard my name being called out from behind me through the flurry that had started to fall all around; I spun to see Teresa at the entrance of the Clinical Building, waving to me. She was calling something, but the wind had made her words unintelligible, so I asked her to repeat herself.

"What?" I called.

"She changed her mind," Teresa yelled back.

* * *

"How many?" I asked.

Violet looked up at me from the seat beside me on the couch, then looked away. She hadn't looked me in the eye very much since she'd asked Teresa to run down the hall and chase me outside, asking me to come back and visit her. We had been sitting alone in the common room of CB1 for about ten minutes, and up until I started asking about how she got in here, things were almost totally silent. I cleared my throat once, I think. But that was it.

"How many what?" She asked.

"How many stitches did you need?"

She looked back down at her hands, which she was playing with nervously. She shrugged.

"Fifty-five."

"How many times did you cut yourself?"

"How many times did I cut, or how many needed stitches?" She asked.

I felt my stomach turn over. I was trying to be mathematical about my questions so that Violet didn't think her self-injury bothered me, but it did on a number of levels. Firstly, I was scared. Scared that she was capable of something so gruesome and scared that she could accidentally go too far and make a cut they wouldn't be able to stitch up and scared that I didn't understand any of it. Secondly, I was disgusted. This was an emotion I would never share with Violet, but it was genuine and might have been stronger than the fear. Open wounds and blood disgusted me, and to know that Violet was nearly always covered in one or both of those was repulsive. And I hated myself for feeling that way.

"Both," I said.

"Well I cut about sixty times or something," she said too nonchalantly, "but only nine of them needed to be stitched."

Only, she said. Only nine of them. Nine out of sixty.

"Stop picking at your fingernails like that," I said to fill the silence. I didn't know how to respond to what she had said, but I felt like the silence was cumbersome and awkward and I wanted to squash it. She grimaced at me, pressing her lips together and furrowing her brows, but still lowered her hands to her lap compliantly.

In CB1, Violet was dressed unlike I'd ever seen her dressed before. She wore blue hospital-issued pants and a plain white v-neck t-shirt with short sleeves. The neckline of the shirt plunged down farther than anything I'd ever seen her wear, and I had to make an effort not to let my eyes wander to all the bare skin that I hadn't seen before. But it was difficult; after weeks of seeing her dress like a grandmother, it was strange to see her in things that were more revealing. Even if they still covered almost everything.

"What's with the clothes?" I asked and pinched the fabric of her pants. She looked down and sighed, running her hand over her thigh. Our hands almost brushed together with the motion. Almost.

"I have to wear whatever they have here. Lost and found items," she said. "These are somebody's old scrub pants, and I think this is a men's undershirt."

"Why can't you wear your own clothes?" I asked, and Violet rolled her eyes and shrugged.

"I don't know. I guess somebody's used their own clothes in the past to hurt themselves, so now we all have to wear clothes that are 'approved' by the hospital. I think it's dumb, but I don't really have a choice."

I wanted to tell her that I thought she looked nice in these clothes, but how stupid would that sound? To tell someone that they looked beautiful in scrubs and an undershirt? I then wanted to ask her to let me see her cuts, but that would require her unraveling the feet upon feet of bandages she had wrapped around them. So I didn't. I just sat there in silence, stealing sidelong glances at her, waiting for her to say something.

"It's just so dumb," she said in a tone just above a murmur. "They can't keep me from hurting myself. I don't know why they try."

I felt my heart shatter into a thousand pieces. _They can't keep me from hurting myself_. It wasn't a threat so much as a statement of fact, like something unfortunate and inevitable she wished we'd all accept already. But how can you accept something like that? How can you accept that someone so lovely and so loveable does something so sordid and appalling to herself? I tried to keep my breathing even as my pulse picked up again, this time simply out of intense, unexpected sadness. I felt my knees go hot and weak, and my eyes went down. I didn't want to cry. Not here. Not like this. Not again.

"I wish you wouldn't," I said. I could see her nod out of the corner of her eye.

When she didn't say anything else, I didn't push. I didn't think it appropriate to make her say something when she obviously didn't want to talk anymore. She ran her hand back up her thigh and her skin brushed mine and in a momentary state of boldness I grabbed her hand in mine, cupping my fingers over her first finger and her palm. She closed her fingers over mine and squeezed, and neither of us said anything or looked at each other. We just stayed like that, holding each other's hands in total silence, alone in the common room of an inpatient unit. The time did not pass by slowly. I did not wish something would be said, or that action would be taken. I would have been contented to stay there like that, sitting just like that, side by side holding hands for the remainder of the evening.  
Eventually, Violet cleared her throat to speak.

"Thank you," she said quietly. I looked over at her for the first time in who knows how many minutes.

"For what?"

"For not asking me to stop hurting myself."

I pressed my lips together in a half-smile. I squeezed her hand, and that was all that needed to be done to convey to her that I understood. That I could grasp the entirety of her gratitude. And that I would never ask her to stop, no matter how badly I wanted her to.

* * *

**A/N: Finally, some real action between them! And I also got around to talking about Violet's cutting, which was long since due. For the hundredth time, thank you all for your positive reviews and comments. Please keep posting them, they're highly encouraging and make me feel good. Also, thank you all for your sweet comments of support and love concerning my condition. You're all lovely, and I'll try my best to get the next chapter up in a jiffy! xoxo Elvis**


	10. Poker

_I never really wanted you to see  
The screwed up side of me that I keep  
Locked inside of me so deep  
It always seems to get to me  
I never really wanted you to go  
So many things you should have known  
I guess for me there's just no hope  
I never meant to be so cold  
What I really meant to say  
Is I'm sorry for the way I am  
I never meant to be so cold_

_-Cold by Crossfade_

The next time I saw Violet was three days later, on a Sunday. There was a baseball game on TV that afternoon and the whole unit had congregated in the common room to watch it so she and I decided to spend our time in the kitchen, which was otherwise totally empty. Even the staff had joined in for the game day party. I didn't blame all of them; it was the final game of the World Series. If I hadn't been visiting Violet and she hadn't voiced her adamant dislike of baseball, I would have been watching the game with them.

"I don't get it," she said, shuffling a deck of beat-up poker cards. "I thought baseball season was in the summer."

"The final games carry over into the autumn," I said. She was dealing the cards evenly between us, five and five.

"Are we playing poker?"

"Yeah," she said, sliding her hand off the table and fanning it out in front of her. "Unless you're scared I'll kick your ass."

I picked up my cards and looked at them. Nothing. Not two cards that had anything in common

"Well, not with this hand you won't," I lied. I was awful at lying in most situations, but when it came to poker, I was excellent.

"You're bluffing." Violet narrowed her eyes at me and looked down at the back of my cards then back up.

"I don't know. I don't really remember how to play poker, but I think this is a decent hand."

She peered at me for a while, her eyes full of doubt and intrigue. Eventually she dropped down three of her cards and picked up three more, sliding them into place in her hand.

"Fine, smart ass. Let's do it."

I smiled and dropped down two of my cards, knowing already that I'd lost. We went through the drop down/pick up process once more and Violet smiled, wiggling back in her seat. She draped her free arm over the back of her chair and exhaled.

"Confident?" I asked, and she nodded.

Then all of a suddenly like a bus on a blind turn–slam. An idea spread trough me like a fast-acting disease, quick and hot and pulsing. I knew it was a bad idea, too dumb, too bold. But the thought of it, just the possibility of it, made my heart jump up into my throat. I couldn't believe I hadn't thought of it before. I couldn't believe I was going to suggest it. But I was.

"Then bet on it," I said, unable to keep the grin from splitting across my face.

"What?"

"If you're so confident that you're going to win, bet on it."

"I haven't got any money. And neither do you."

"Then we bet things that don't have monetary value," I said, my speech picking up. I willed myself to follow through with my plan, despite how ridiculous it was beginning to sound in my head.

"What, you want me to make you a fuckin' card or friendship bracelet or something?" She asked.

"No," I said, feeling my heart beat so fast it could have jumped out of my chest. Boom boom boom. A metronome. My hands were shaking. "I want you to kiss me."

All of Violet's arrogance melted away and she pulled her arm down off of the back of the chair.

"What?" She asked, her voice a small soft breath.

Now was not the time to back out. I had made a risky proposition, knowing she might decline, and I had to follow through. My hands shook violently and my throat was dry and every inch of me was screaming to tell her just kidding, never mind, it was a joke I didn't mean it of course I couldn't possibly letsmoveonandplayanotherhand –but I ignored it all and kept my eyes on hers. I would not back down now.

"If I win this hand, you have to kiss me."

Violet stuck out her jaw and looked down at her cards and straightened her back, thinking. And she thought. And she thought. And eventually she shrugged, looking up at me complacently.

"Alright, sure."

My heart dropped into my stomach.

"But only if you _promise_ to follow through on my prize if I win," she said, holding out her hand as if to stop the momentum of my excitement, which must have been visible.

I nodded. Truthfully, I would have given that girl anything she asked me for, poker game or no poker game.

Violet looked down at the table and blinked carefully as she considered the possibilities for her prize. Her hands stills stiffly held her cards, which were dogeared around the edges and spaced evenly beside one another. Eventually, she spoke.

"I want to spend the holidays at your house."

I frowned. Not out of disdain or anger, but out of confusion. My face contorted into a puzzled look and I flinched a little.

"What?"

"I want to spend Thanksgiving and Christmas at your house with you and your family," she said. Her affect was completely neutral and her tone inoffensive, lacking aggression or demand. But her hands gripped her cards a little to tightly.

"Why?" I asked.

"Look, either we have a deal or we don't."

"Will the hospital even allow that?"

"I'll figure it out. Do we have a deal?"

I sat back in my chair. I would have no one at Christmas. My parents were dead, my sister moved to California after they died and hasn't come back since, and my wife left me for a Doctor who was much richer than me and undoubtedly much more handsome. I would be alone, and having Violet around might make the holidays bearable.

"Alright," I said. "We can do that."

Violet's face lit up and she grinned. I'd never seen her that happy in the whole time I'd known her. Like a beam of sunlight tearing through her darkness.

"Really?" She asked. I nodded. "Really, really?"

"Jesus Christ, Violet, I already said yes," I laughed. She beamed at me.

"On the count of three, put down your cards. Okay?"

I nodded, and she counted to three. I put mine flat down on the table, revealing what I had thought was a hand of nothing; she had two pair.

"Well, you win," I said and leaned forward. I looked up at her face, which I expected would have been equally if not more excited than it was a few moments earlier, only to find it had fallen into completely neutrality. I didn't understand.

"...I figured you'd have reacted a little differently than that, after all the hype you set up around the betting thing," I said.

Nothing. She didn't even blink. She just looked up at me with a totally neutral face, completely blank, unmoving.

"Is that supposed to be funny?"

I flinched.

"What?"

"Is it supposed to be funny to act like I won? Is this your version of a joke?"

I shook my head and laughed nervously. Turning my head a little bit but still keeping me eyes on Violet's, I tried to figure out what was going on.

"Uhh...I lost, though. Didn't I?"

"You're an asshole." Her voice was a hiss.

"What?"

"I said you're an asshole, Kit Walker," she repeated, raising her voice. "A full house beats a two pair and you know it and you're being an asshole on purpose."

I looked down at my cards and flushed, realizing that I hadn't even seen that I had an upper hand. I did look like an asshole. An arrogant, gloating asshole.

"Violet, I–"

"Just get out," she said. And then she did something I never expected her to do in front of anyone, let alone me: she began to cry. Silently, granted. But the years were big and flowing quickly out of her. My heart sank.

"I'm really sorry, Violet, I honestly didn't–"

"OUT! OUT! GET OUT! GET OUT OF HERE!"

The screaming had begun as suddenly as the crying had. Her face contorted and her mouth opened up all the way and she waved her arms at me, as though shooing me away, like I was a pesky animal. And she just kept on screaming. No matter how many times I tried to explain myself, no matter how many times I told her I was sorry, no matter how many times I asked her to please calm down and tell me what was going on, why she was acting like this. She just kept on screaming.

It didn't take long for the nurses to come, for them to ask me to please leave, for them to grab my arm and drag me out when I refused. I repeated her name over and over as I was dragged out of the kitchen, trying to get through to her, maybe crack through to the Violet I knew. The one that didn't behave this way. But it didn't work. She continued to scream at me, screaming, screaming, screaming. I heard her screaming all the way down the corridor to the exit. She'd later tell me she screamed long after I'd left the building.

* * *

"I just don't get what the hell happened," I said to Dr. Thredson the next day when we met for our session. I'd recounted the whole playing-cards-at-CB1 incident to him in full detail, from the empty kitchen to the conditions of the bet to the unexpected, extreme mood swing that didn't seem fitting.

"I mean, I get why she would have been a little bit upset. It looked like I was being a douche, and maybe that thanksgiving and Christmas thing meant a lot to her. If she'd stopped at calling me an asshole and maybe pouted a little bit, it would have made sense. Even telling me to leave would have been within some kind of reason. But the way she reacted seemed so _extreme_. I mean, I have never seen anyone scream and cry like that over anything, let alone a lousy game of poker."

Thredson smiled at me.

"Indeed, it was an intense reaction. And I would be as confused and upset as you are if it had happened to me. And that being said, Violet is a very emotional girl. She doesn't react in ways that would make sense to others."

I scoffed.

"Oh, please. We're all emotional here. That was _ridiculous_. What she did was ridiculous."

Thredson nodded.

"To a stable person, yes. That would seem ridiculous."

"Instability is no excuse to act like the friggin' exorcist because you lost a poker game."

Thredson crossed his legs and sighed. "Kit, let me ask you something. Do you know what Violet is here for?"

My stomach flipped and I swallowed and saw flashes of white gauze and blue hospital pants. I was nauseous.

"Yeah," I rasped, then cleared my throat.

"What's she here for?"

My jaw clenched. I didn't want to say it. If I said it, it was real to somebody else. It was real to the rest of the world. It was actually happening.

"She's here because she cuts herself."

"Do you think that's her condition, or a symptom of her condition?"

I furrowed my brow and looked up at Thredson.

"What?"

"Self harm is not a disorder, Kit. It happens as a result of other overarching problems."

"Like what?"

That was where he stopped. I could tell from the way he pursed his lips, the way he looked down at his hideous carpet for a moment then back up at me, the way he blinked softly.

"You'll have to ask Violet that question the next time you see her," he said.

I leaned back in my seat and sighed.

"That might not be for a while," I said. "I'm not allowed to go back to visit her anymore."

My voice was small, sad, pathetic. I felt like a dog that had been kicked out of the house, forced to sit outside the door and wait to be let back in the door.

"I'm sorry to hear that." Thredsons's tone matched mine. I liked that he did that.

"So," he said, sighing again. "That fuzzy distant feeling you get. How's that doing?"

I shrugged.

"It's alright. Happens almost every day, if not multiple times a day. Why?"

With the way Thredson raised his eyebrows and flipped through his notes, I knew what was coming before it even came. I didn't know exactly what he was going to say, of course, but I knew it was something important, intense, significant. The way he was sitting gave it away: leaned back, fingertips to his lips, eyes slightly squinted. He was going to tell me something big. He was going to tell me something was wrong with me.

"I think you might have a form of a dissociative disorder. Something called derealization."

I frowned.

"What?"

"Dissociation. It's something that a brain trains itself to do when it's exposed to significant trauma. It learns not to feel as a coping mechanism, teaching itself not to feel feelings in order to reduce the pain. Whenever someone with a dissociative disorder has a spike in emotion, their brain detaches itself from the body in a way, so that thy don't have to feel whatever they would otherwise feel."

He was watching me for my reaction. I stayed neutral. As neutral as Violet had been before she blew up at me.

"In your case, someone starts to see things and hear things and experience as though they aren't real–just as the brain wishes they weren't. It's a fascinating phenomenon."

"Yeah," I whispered. "Fascinating."

Thredson was still watching me.

I tried my best to keep from floating away at this particular moment, because it would be too poetic and too fitting and it would be proof that Thredson was right and I wanted him to be wrong he was wrong wrong wrong wrong there was nothing wrong with me I was fine this was wrong. But the colors of the room were starting to dull along with my senses and all the walls blurred into one and I felt nothing. Nothing. Like I wasn't even capable of feeling. Like a book with all the pages ripped out. I tried to make myself feel something, will myself to experience emotion. But I couldn't. I was physically incapable of it.

"Kit?" Thredson called out to me trough the mud and fog and blur.

"Can I go?"

Thredson exhaled slowly. I knew he wanted me to stay and work on this, figure out why it was happening and come up with a way to keep it from happening again. But he wouldn't make me. He just looked at me sympathetically and nodded.

"Yeah. It's been a tough session, you can go a little early."

"Thanks," I murmured as rose from my chair and made my way to the blurred door, the lamp on the end table beside it emanating a light that, in my state, seemed far too bright. Just before I reached for the handle, Thredson called after me one last time.

"Kit," he said.

"Yeah?"

"Get some good sleep."

I turned the handle and stepped into the hallway, not looking back as I answered my doctor.

"I always do."

* * *

**A/N: Phew! A lot happened in this chapter, huh? Very emotional. Let me know what you think, comments/favorites are always appreciated. See you guys next chapter! xoxo elvis**


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